Authors: Tamara Jeggli, Samuel Thoma, Tatjana Todorovic and Hanieh Aslani
Sustainable and resource-conserving use of energy is a major issue in many Swiss municipalities and its approaches are clearly very different. The map shows a compilation of four municipalities in the cantons of Aargau, Lucerne, Zurich, and Baselland and their individual energy practices and issues. It can be seen that the importance of energy consumption in municipalities varies greatly. While some municipalities, such as Bülach, place great emphasis on improving energy issues, like promoting rainwater harvesting, communities such as Lengnau, on the contrary, are very opaque about how they plan to address energy issues. The different communities are at different stages of the implementation. In some of them, little is being done, others have already developed or are implementing energy optimization models. As Bülach, Frenkendorf holds an energy award, but the progress of energy in each district varies as well as the communication flow.
We can conclude that most municipalities are somehow failing to communicate or convey how the issues will be resolved, and therefore fail to place emphasis on working with the community population. According to our discussion, we see communication between the municipalities and the community as one of the most important elements to change.