[Last updated: 22.09.2005]

The significant and increasing environmental damage due to private household consumption presents a major challenge in achieving sustainable development. The aim of this project area has been to generate knowledge about the state and driving forces of the consumption of energy and transport at household level in Norway.

Ingrid T. Norland was the researcher, and Project affiliate was Carlo Aall (Western Norway Research Institute) and Erling Holden (Western Norway Research Institute and NTNU)

Projects:

Ecological footprint

Through this project ProSus wished to contribute to the development of pedagogical measuring tools and indicators for sustainable development. An ecological footprint is an indicator that uses biological productive land as its measuring unit. It provides a figure indicating how much productive land and water area is needed to produce the resources we need in order to keep up our standard of living, and how much land is needed in order to absorb our effluent, e.g. climate gas emissions.

The purpose of ProSus’ activity within this field was to identify better and more suitable indicators for the consumption in households and the environmental strain it generates.

The project was based on a co-operation with the Municipality of Oslo and the European Sustainable Cities & Towns Campaign.
Read more on the ecological footprint project.

SusHomes

The overall aim of the project was to obtain new empirical and theoretical knowledge about the relation between physical urban planning, environmental values and household consumption.

We have studied eight residential areas in the Greater Oslo Region in order to see how the households’ consumption patterns vary between different physical living situations; i.e. type of housing, distance from city centre and local service centre, housing density and transport situation.
Read more on the SusHomes project