New IARU Sustainability Case Study

This report is designed to provide sustainability practitioners, policymakers and building users with a framework for designing successful initiatives to reduce energy use at universities.

There is no one best way for altering high energy-consuming behaviours, and in order to create enduring, high-impact policies in universities, interventions should aim to change social norms through holistic and multi-pronged approaches. These approaches may involve education, modelling, incentives, environmental restructuring, persuasion, and enabling. Any one-intervention approach is less likely to create success.

Using a literature review and responses from the IARU universities, this report overviews tactics for designing comprehensive and effective interventions. Nine broad intervention options outlined in their model and are linked here to specific interventions with relevance to universities.

Read the Energy Behavior Case Study here. 

Learn more about the IARU Sustainability Initiative here.