Department Environmental Social Sciences

The construction sector is a significant contributor to Swiss CO2 emissions, accounting for approximately 30% of the total. Consequently, it is crucial in the transition towards circular, net-zero processes. However, the construction industry is deeply entrenched in an unsustainable socio-technical regime. This encompasses conventional, carbon-intensive technologies, materials, and associated practices, as well as business models, regulations, networks, and worldviews. In order to move towards more a more sustainable regime configuration in the future, the sector needs to embark into new business models, break up established ways of doing things, foster niche ideas, and change legislation and worldviews, shortly, it needs to go through a sustainability transition.

In SCENE WP5: Efficient Technical Cycles, we will investigate stabilizing factors and potential modifying regime configurations and related governance arrangements in the construction sector. The project will in-depth assess the potentials for a sustainability transition in the construction sector and identify potential leverage points to speed up transformative change.

The analysis of the stakeholder networks and discourses in the construction sector will provide relevant stakeholders in policy and practice with an in-depth view of the fostering and hindering factors for sustainability transitions and with novel ideas on how the construction sector may be reconfigured to embrace net-zero solutions.

SCENE WP5: Efficient Technical Cycles is part of the joint initiative SCENE - Swiss center of excellence on net zero emissions that covers research areas related to net-zero emissions and provides a network for cross-institutional collaboration.