Advancing Sustainable Solutions

Advancing Sustainable Solutions is the podcast of the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics at Lund University, known as the IIIEE. The format is simple. Researchers talk with an institute colleague about a specific project: what it set out to learn, how it was done and what it could change. Philipp Montenegro hosts several episodes, and his questions go past method to the personal: what motivates a researcher, what impact they hope for, and how the work has affected them. Two institute assistants, Lili Diamant and Ella Alfredsson-Jofs, present a two-part set on the SCORAI conference. SCORAI stands for the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative, an international network of researchers and practitioners. One part goes behind the scenes with Matthias Lehner, who talks about how much work the process took and how, to his pleasant surprise, he enjoyed it anyway. The other is an interview with keynote speaker Manisha Anantharaman. She describes tracing the chain of custody of goods to bring in workers and stakeholders who usually go unseen in the sustainable consumption debate. A bag of crisps makes her point that owning something is pleasant for only part of its life. She also offers book and reading recommendations for anyone new to the field. Jenny von Platten, who spent two years at the institute as a postdoctoral researcher, talks through JustHeat, a project on the social and cultural history of heating. Her argument is that the non-technical side matters, because a transition without public support may struggle to happen at all, and she points to the polarised heat pump debate in Germany. Her qualitative approach even uses art as a way to capture more personal stories. The Women in Power project brings three researchers, introduced as Daniela, Jenny and Anarika, to discuss women's inclusion in the energy sector and whether renewables in Sweden will open more doors. One episode gathers six researchers from a project on myths about sustainable consumption, which Oksana leads within the Mistra Sustainable Consumption from Niche to Mainstream programme. They challenge the persistent belief that people will always want more and never choose sufficiency, tracing it to growth ideology and consumer culture, and one of them notes that keeping up with the Joneses has become keeping up with the Kardashians. The 1.5° Lifestyles conversation covers the institute's part in the Swedish case of a European project, including the rebound effect and the workshops used to understand people's motivations for change. One finding sticks: people resisted living smaller until the future was framed as more social, with shared space, less upkeep and room for a barbecue with friends. The catch is structural, since residents are unlikely to build shared barbecue spaces themselves, not least because they are not allowed to. The research also reaches the public in other forms, and the episodes mention a MOOC, a book on consumption myths and a 1.5° lifestyles game. The register is earnest and conversational, the vocabulary academic but approachable, and the projects keep being tied back to choices anyone would recognise from daily life.