Mission out: UCILeR researcher takes part in PERSIST kick-off meeting

Our researcher Natália Moreno attended the kick-off meeting of the PERSIST project on 1 March in Lucerne. The PERSIST - Positive EneRgy diStrIctS driven by ciTizens project was approved in the DUT (Driving Urban Transitions) Call for Proposals 2022, as part of the "Positive Energy Districts Transition Pathway", and is coordinated by the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. At UCILeR, the team led by researcher Fernanda Paula Oliveira includes Fernando Borges and Natália Moreno. PERSIST aims to gain a better understanding of how socio-economic, socio-cultural, and socio-political factors shape Positive Energy Districts (PED) and their interrelationships with technological, regulatory, and investment aspects in different geographical, cultural, and economic contexts.

The meeting in Lucerne marked the start of collaboration on the 36-month project with 16 partners. The plurality of partners is a unique quality of the consortium and an extraordinary potential for synergies. The partners cover engineering, economics, law, and social science disciplines, as well as economic and social stakeholders. Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are fundamental aspects of the consortium's basis and collaboration is integrated to enable research into techno-economic and social effects, thus avoiding disciplinary silos.