Erling Holden

Three Challenges for the Compact City as a Sustainable Urban Form: Household Consumption of Energy and Transport in Eight Residential Areas in the Greater Oslo Region

The results of a recent survey conducted in eight residential areas in the Greater Oslo Region support the hypothesis that there is a connection between land use characteristics and household consumption of energy and transport. Findings from the survey also lend great support to the compact city as a sustainable urban form. However, three distinct findings indicate that decentralised concentration could lead to even lower energy use in households: while the extent of everyday travel decreases in densely populated areas, the central urban areas represent the highest level of leisure-time travel by plane; the access to a private garden limits the extent of leisure travel; and, the difference in energy use for housing between single-family and multifamily housing is reduced in housing built after 1980, indicating that the established conclusions on the most energy-efficient housing should be questioned.

Troublesome Leisure Travel: The Contradictions of Three Sustainable Transport Policies

Sustainable passenger transport policies are most often directed towards everyday travel and ignore the large and expanding amount of leisure travel. The paper examines whether policies aimed at reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions for everyday travel may have the opposite effect on leisure travel by reviewing studies of three sustainable passenger transport policies: developing more compact cities, building pro-environment awareness and attitudes, and promoting the growth of information and communication technologies. We found that the policies may indeed have unintended effects and suggest several mechanisms that could explain why this opposite effect occurs. Consideration is also given to the implications for developing more comprehensive sustainable transport policies.

The Imperatives of Sustainable Development

The United Nations sustainable development goals are under fire. By attempting to cover all that is good and desirable in society, these targets have ended up as vague, weak, or meaningless. We suggest a model for sustainable development based on three moral imperatives: satisfying human needs, ensuring social equity, and respecting environmental limits. The model reflects Our Common Futures central message, moral imperatives laid out in philosophical texts on needs and equity, and recent scientific insights on environmental limits. The model is in conflict with the popular three-pillar model of sustainable development, which seeks to balance social, environmental, and economic targets. Rather, we argue that sustainable development constitutes a set of constraints on human behaviour, including constraints on economic activity. By identifying indicators, and thresholds, we illustrate that different regions or groups of countries face different challenges. Copyright

Environmental attitudes and household consumption: an ambiguous relationship

This article analyses the relationship between environmental attitudes and energy use in the home and for transport by Norwegian households. Quantitative surveys were used to find statistical correlations, and qualitative analyses to reveal mechanisms that influence the ability to behave in an environmentally friendly way. Three theses about attitudes, mechanisms and household consumption are presented. Firstly, a desire to project an environmentally friendly image has little influence on energy use in the home and for transport. Secondly, a sense of powerlessness prevents people from translating positive environmental attitudes into low energy use in the home and for everyday transport. Thirdly, a desire to self-indulge prevents people from translating positive environmental attitudes into low energy use for long distance leisure travel. These results have important implications for environmental policy. Public information and awareness campaigns can give consumers information on how to behave in an environmentally responsible way, but tend only to influence categories of consumption with little environmental impact. Structural change can be used to mitigate the effect of the sense of powerlessness and encourage environmentally friendly behaviour, but the desire to self-indulge is much more difficult to deal with.

Planning theory: Democracy or sustainable development? – Both (but don't bother about the bread, please) 1

In this article I raise the question of how various planning theories relate to the two normative conceptual systems of democracy and sustainable development. The issue under consideration is to what extent various normative planning theories on their own or in combination most satisfactorily can reconcile the requirements of a sustainable development with the implications of democracy. Such an assessment is based on the fact that democracy implies characteristic features such as participation, dialogue, communication, and consensus development. On the other hand, sustainable development demands protection of the interests of the worlds poor, of future generations and of other species, as well as prompt and effective action. Through an analysis of synoptic planning, incremental planning, equity planning, and democratic planning, I shall argue that a combination of synoptic and equity planning is best suited to take democratic rules into account, as well as forming the basis for planning in a more sustain...

Sustainable Mobility—Challenges for a Complex Transition

Sustainable Mobility—Challenges for a Complex Transition Gerald Berger, Peter H. Feindt, Erling Holden & Frieder Rubik a Institute for Managing Sustainability, Vienna University of Economic and Business, Vienna, Austria b Section Communication, Philosophy and Technology, Wageningen University, Hollandseweg 1, Wageningen, The Netherlands c Faculty of Engineering and Sciences, Sogn and Fjordane University College, Sogndal, Norway d Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IOW), Heidelberg, Germany Published online: 25 Sep 2014.

Alternative fuels and sustainable mobility: is the future road paved by biofuels, electricity or hydrogen?

This paper compares 16 alternative energy chains in a Well-to-Wheel analysis including three indicators: energy use, emissions of climate gases and emissions of local/regional pollutants. The analysis includes a private car which uses natural gas, biological fuels, electricity and hydrogen, respectively. The analysis shows that an alternative witch scores favourably on one indicator often scores unfavourably on other indicators. Sustainable mobility, however, requires favourable scores on all indicators. Thus, sustainable mobility must combine three different approaches: the efficiency approach - which includes the use of alternative energy - the substitution approach and the reduction approach.

Five criteria for global sustainable development

A clear understanding of the global-level sustainable development concept is necessary before applying it to projects at a national, local or firm level. Such lower-level projects may concern managing production and consumption of energy, organisation of cities and using land productively. However, the sustainable development goals adopted at the United Nations Summit in September 2015 do not provide adequate guidance, even at the global level, because the goals are too many, too vague and often not quantified. Based on the 1987 report Our Common Future, we derive five criteria for the development of primary goals and corresponding indictors and quantified thresholds to be met.