Headquarted in Berlin, the SPCE Hub was founded by Central Asian and European partners at the end of 2020. It is an inter-cultural research facilitator and ‘think & do hub’ for Living Labs with a focus on energy transition, mobility and inclusive development.
Central Asia and Europe are linked not only by decades of oil trade and increasing climate and sustainability cooperation. Both regions face multiple megatrends and challenges, such as climate change, global energy transition, and digitalization. These trends and challenges are interconnected and cannot be solved by one sector or a country in isolation. Rather they require coordination and cooperation within and across national borders and sectors. Moreover, energy transition and progress in sustainability require innovations at many levels, including technology and entrepreneurship, but also social innovations, e.g. when it comes to energy saving.
Living Labs can play an instrumental role in fostering energy transition and enable mutual learning in all directions.
Living Labs can play an instrumental role in fostering this progress. They can enable learning from international best practices and innovations, adapting them to the local context as well as testing and developing own, ‘home-grown’ solutions. They can also help to improve stakeholder coordination and speed up the transition process. Living labs bring many benefits. They…
- test new potential solutions supported by scientific evaluation before putting them into practice at large scale;
- help to identify challenges during the implementation phase;
- enable mutual learning processes in all directions
- improve the ‘ownership’ and acceptance of solutions by local stakeholders
Thus, the expected outcomes of living labs are
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Locally relevant, tested and socially accepted solutions and innovations
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Scientific knowledge, published in academic journals, thus also advancing and embedding the learnings in local knowledge institutions
- Progress in Education for Sustainable Development
In order to promote and reflect the potential of living labs, as well as co-design and implement Living Labs, SPCE Hub is engaging in various activities:
Conferences
Workshops and Trainings
- Pilot projects
Publications for the wider public (‘science communication’) and for academia
Participation in conferences on energy transition, sustainable mobility, as well as on transfer-oriented and transdisciplinary practices and research methods
Last but not least: We jointly co-design and will implement Living Labs
We appreciate the historic and cultural diversity of every region and strive to overcome knowledge hierarchies and one-way knowledge transfers.
Our geneneral goals and values:
- We co-create visible, stimulating, successful outcomes in the renewable energy and mobility sectors and help to make progress in inclusive development
- As we aim to co-create and enact visions of sustainability in our projects, we appreciate the historic and cultural diversity of every region and recognise the wide-ranging effects of various inequalities.
- We strive to overcome knowledge hierarchies and one-way knowledge transfers, by focusing on shared problems and enabling learning processes in all directions, while also considering the inequalities present in these interactions.
- As intercultural facilitators, we share our intimate knowledge and experience of societies and cross-cultural cooperation.
- We communicate our work results in clear, positive ways that non-academic audiences will understand.
- We provide analysis and advice to policymakers.