Empowering the Irish Energy Transition: Harnessing Sensor Technology for Engagement in an Embedded Living Lab

Abstract

The transition to a decarbonised energy system in Ireland presents significant socio-technical challenges. This paper, focused on the work of the SMARTLAB project at the Citizen Innovation Lab in Limerick city, investigated the potential of a localised living lab approach to address these challenges. Engaging across 70 buildings and their inhabitants, the project captured the evolution of attitudes and intentions towards the clean energy transition in ways directly relevant to future policy implementation across grid redevelopment, smart service design, and national retrofit. Project methodology was framed by a living lab approach, with wireless energy and indoor environment sensors installed in participant buildings and participant journeys developed by harnessing the Citizen Innovation Lab ecosystem. The results indicate behaviour changes among participants, particularly focusing on indoor environmental conditions. The study concludes that embedded, localised living labs offer a methodological framework which can capture diverse datasets and encompass complex contemporary contexts towards transition goals.

1. Introduction

The considerable challenge of the Irish energy transition—transformation of the grid system, mass retrofit of building stock, catchup development of smart technology and a smart services market—represents an immense socio-technical experiment. Ireland’s Climate Action Plan commits us to an increase in renewable energy from 42% to 80% by 2030, with the introduction of demand side flexibility of up to 30% [1]. This transition entails a multifaceted transformation of building material, energy provision and generation, smart technologies and services, financial instruments and economic policy, and a re-tooling of the citizen’s relationship to energy [2,3]. This last aspect, in particular the social context of the clean energy transition, has been under-examined in Ireland, and research on in-depth public engagement in energy innovation projects is still rare. Involving citizens and their buildings in the energy transition is crucial for developing policies and programmes which can engage with the complexity of how buildings are used and the motivations of those who use them, thus identifying opportunities for those uses and motivations to evolve. The development of a new services market to cater to the vast increase in building smartness required by the demands of energy flexibility must also be accomplished in collaboration with end users if it is to be effective and swiftly operationalised. Supporting energy users to become prosumers, to have much more agency within the energy market, in energy use and generation, will be dependent on strategies to translate and make legible energy and environmental sensor data. The community-focused bottom-up nature of recent EU energy policy will demand new structures for collaborative energy communities.

This paper makes the case for a localised and integrated Living Lab approach as a necessary pathway in grappling with the real-world challenges of this transition. Using insights from a living lab project based at the Citizen Innovation Lab (CIL) in Limerick city, this paper illustrates the unique effectiveness of a living lab approach in addressing the tripartite challenges of developing the community, data, and services structures required by a decarbonised energy system. Living lab projects and methodologies are relatively new in the Irish context, particularly those which are part of an embedded and established living lab. Although there is strong growth in the use of living lab approaches across Irish universities, municipalities and other policy-focused bodies, there are few living labs that operate as organisations and transcend single-project “micro” and “meso” levels of operation [4]. This project benefited from the existing networks and capacities of the CIL, representing new opportunities for Irish transition research. A core finding of this project, in its successes and limitations, was that the Irish energy transition will require new forms of collaboration at neighbourhood and city-level to engage with the balancing requirements of renewable technologies. While these collaborative structures are in place in other EU contexts, the privatised and unit-based energy network in Ireland, where every building and apartment has its own electricity and gas supply and meter, will require a more substantial transition than many of its European neighbours. This project thus addresses research gaps in embedded living labs and energy transition approaches in the Irish context.

This paper is an account of the work of the SMARTLAB project in Limerick city, led by the University of Limerick and funded by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland Research Development and Demonstration Fund (RDD 2021/634), examining the potential of smart technology to support the clean energy transition in Irish buildings. SMARTLAB was a living lab project, one of a suite of projects based at the Citizen Innovation Lab in Limerick city, an initiative jointly led by the University of Limerick and Limerick City and County Council. The SMARTLAB project, engaging across 70 buildings and their inhabitants, captured the evolution of attitudes and intentions towards the clean energy transition in ways directly relevant to future policy implementation across grid redevelopment, smart service design, and national retrofit. The engaged and multi-stakeholder living lab approach acted as a container and filtration mechanism for the multiple complexities of transition challenges across buildings, people, and technology. Harnessing early findings from SMARTLAB and the wider work of the Citizen Innovation Lab, this paper first contextualises the EU and Irish energy transition landscape, then situates the work of SMARTLAB’s living lab approach within the wider living lab context. We then illustrate some key aspects of the project’s methodology and highlight some promising findings. The paper concludes with observations about the opportunities for living lab projects to accelerate the Irish and EU energy transition.

The high-level framework objective of the SMARTLAB project was to feed into Irish approaches to the proposed Smart Readiness Indicator, an EU scheme introduced as part of the European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) in 2018 [5]. The latest recast of the EPBD EU/2010/31 and the Energy Efficiency Directive EU/2023/1791, revised in 2023, both promote policies to support the decarbonisation of European building stock by 2050 and are seen as crucial sections of the European Green Deal. Once ratified by the Council of the EU, implementation by member states will begin in 2026. The SRI is an ambitious attempt to both encourage and frame the energy transition in buildings, supporting the transformation of how buildings use energy and support inhabitant health and wellbeing with maximum efficiency. It seeks not simply a transfer of energy use from fossil fuels to renewables but a wholesale reorientation of the relationship between buildings, building users, and the energy system. The breadth of this ambition necessitates policy and implementation responses that can both spur and evaluate the multifaceted transitions that need to take place. The SMARTLAB project was thus carried out during a moment of transformation in European and Irish national policy implementation around energy. Policy guidelines and priorities to support the shift from fossil fuels and centralised energy supply are in place, with targets set and concrete timelines plotted, but the implementation of the required infrastructure changes and service markets is still unfolding. The SRI legal framework is in place, but the technical framework is still being developed, with test phases underway in a number of EU countries as they prepare an SRI rollout in national regulation and markets. The technical framework will be subject to national authorities implementing the SRI and defining the smart-ready services, functionalities and parameters of their own national SRI. Work is continuing to build national frameworks, accelerate technology rollouts, digitalisation, new services and business models, and training of SRI assessors, with grants and tenders identified in support [6].

In the Irish context, the energy transition is nascent and in flux. There is as yet no commitment to implement the SRI Framework, although the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, as the national contact point, are exploring its potential [7]. Significant effort is being expended across multiple government agencies to prepare for the transformation of the energy system, but some aspects remain critically stalled, particularly those requiring widespread citizen-led prosumer initiatives, data accessibility, and smart services. While the rollout of smart meters—essential first steps in preparing for both smart energy consumption and smart services—is proceeding apace with 1.6 m installed as of March 2024, the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities envisages only 30% target for demand flexibility in the grid by 2030 [8,9]. Timelines defined by the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities commit to a focus on increasing flexibility products, technologies, markets, standards and frameworks between 2024 and 2026. The 2024 Irish Climate Action Plan includes numerous measures around energy efficiency policy, incentives and methodologies, including Regional Renewable Electricity Strategies, effective bans on fossil fuel boilers in new dwellings from 2025, and planning and permitting frameworks for district heating rollout [1]. But despite widespread smart meter distribution, there is only an 11% uptake in access to smart tariffs among electricity users, illuminating the lack of consumer awareness and comfort with energy data and services. Despite the centrality of communities and citizens at the heart of the EU vision for a new decentralised and decarbonised energy system and the 2023 Climate Action Plan aiming to “develop and implement measures and policy that facilitate and empower consumers to benefit from engagement in the energy transition, through active participation in the energy market and flexible demand management services”, the crucial energy services that are needed to facilitate prosumer behaviour have yet to break through into the Irish domestic market. While we stand on the cusp of transformative change, it is worth noting that a widespread review of challenges facing energy communities across Europe found that “supporting the green transition and social aspects of these initiatives are of greater importance for collective energy actors than the “economic benefits” [10]. This finding was reflected in the work of SMARTLAB’s living lab.

Driving the open innovation approach in sustainable urban development and citizen engagement, the Citizen Innovation Lab (CIL) was created to bring the University and the City together in Limerick. Jointly steered by the University of Limerick (UL) and Limerick City and County Council (LCCC), the CIL uses a living lab approach to harness the insights of multiple partners and communities towards innovation. It fosters research relevant to LCCC’s Climate Action Plan, leverages opportunities within the EU research funding landscape, and connects research with citizen and community projects that drive climate action in Limerick. To address the complex challenges of climate transition, the Lab seeks to accelerate and embed citizen involvement in climate actions and policy making in the smart city [11,12]. The lab was instigated as part of the work of the EU H2020 project +CityxChange, which defined its focal area and designed the Framework for Innovation Playgrounds, which anchored the place-based approach of the Lab’s work [13,14]. The +CityxChange project also provided the groundwork for the Lab’s focus on energy transition projects, working on the development of Positive Energy Districts in the Lighthouse cities of Limerick and Trondheim. SMARTLAB builds on this legacy. In this respect, SMARTLAB, as a CIL project, can be defined as an urban living lab grounded in long-term stakeholder collaboration.

The European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) highlights five common elements that are central to a living lab approach: multi-method approaches, multi-stakeholder participation, user engagement, real-life setting and co-creation [15]. Because project participants, drawn from a quadruple helix stakeholder model, including academia, industry, government and civil society, are directly involved in multi-layered, dynamic interactions towards the development and testing of an innovation, living labs have the potential to support greater adoption of an innovation [16,17]. Living labs place emphasis on the importance of actively engaging civil society actors in processes of innovation [18,19]. Urban living labs also often involve city authorities, companies and researchers as well as local citizens, and proactive networking among these different stakeholders is seen as a considerable success factor for sustained activity [20]. Their growing popularity within smart city programmes and universities (the university lab is also a subset of living labs) can be in part attributed to a re-focusing of both research and policy development priorities to place emphasis on “impact”, a broad parameter that may include citizen involvement in projects, industry partnerships, media engagement and intellectual property development. Urban living labs, in their grounding across the quadruple helix of societal stakeholders, are well positioned to respond to this impact agenda, which is also heavily embedded in European funding pathways. Urban living labs are both an arena or physical space and a methodology, with particular importance placed on demarcated space for operations [21,22,23]. They are explicit in their place-based focus, working to deliver innovations and transformations within urban contexts responding to societal contexts [24]. In the Limerick context, this demarcated space is both a specific building that acts as headquarters and the working space of the Lab, and the spatial remit of the lab’s working focal area, encompassed by Limerick’s decarbonising zone. Every local authority in Ireland is required to designate a decarbonising zone as part of their statutory Climate Action Plan, defined as “a demonstration and test bed of what is possible for decarbonisation at a local level” [25]. There is thus clear alignment with the capacities of urban living labs to contribute to urban sustainability transitions, being particularly well suited to addressing complex, cross-cutting challenges in climate transitions [26].

One of the most promising capacities of urban living labs is their ability to empower citizens through experiential learning, offering the opportunity to take ownership of climate solutions and transitions [27]. But, as pointed out by Laborgne et al., “inclusive and meaningful ULLs need time. Efforts of network building, reaching out to different groups, learning about different perspectives, needs, and interests require substantial efforts that tend to be easily underestimated” [26]. In the rush to capitalise on the potential of urban living labs to accelerate transitions demanded by climate policies and to provide impact pathways to align with research agendas and funding priorities, there can be insufficient grounding activity and network engagement. This work is likely to require considerable ongoing outreach to build partnerships across the quadruple helix, particularly among less accessible groups. Less grounded activity can lead to outcomes that merely reproduce pre-existing consultation pathways. As acknowledged by Evans and Karvonen in their study of a low-carbon urban lab in Manchester, England, [28] “the knowledge being produced in the laboratory can be circulated through the existing network of ecological modernisation actors while doing little to engage with or improve the everyday lives of those who are not included in the existing governance regime”. The SMARTLAB project grappled with these challenges, harnessing well-founded local networks and offering technological incentives to widen the participant pool, but still finding it challenging to involve a fully representative cohort, particularly among Limerick’s migrant population and those who did not own their buildings. Across living lab projects, beyond the specific urban labs, there is an identified lack of critical examination of methodological or organisational frictions [29]. Urban living labs also face challenges in clearly demonstrating transformative impact within city systems, with a lack of long-term evaluation frameworks for assessing behaviour change [22,30]. The insights gained from the highly localised labs can be overly contextual and difficult to transfer and scale for systemic impact. One suggested approach is the development of “meta-labs”, which can facilitate diffusion and upscaling beyond the geographic boundaries of the lab by structuring experiments across multiple locations and appending a collaborating learning structure to lab activities [31]. Although SMARTLAB focused on one city location, the Citizen Innovation Lab, as an urban lab driven by a statutory county-level Climate Action Plan, is well positioned to network with similar labs in other county areas. The common actions required across Ireland to address the energy transition may provide a useful platform for future meta-lab activity.

SMARTLAB’s focus on energy and the indoor environment, its harnessing of smart technology, and its policy focus on the SRI also justify engagement with literature around the work of energy focused living labs. Although energy labs are not a full subset of living labs with a body of theoretical approaches built into their work, the context of energy lab projects is a useful lens for understanding the work of SMARTLAB. Energy living labs are experimental sites that often feature collaborative testing of new technologies, socio-technical innovation and behavioural interventions in real-world contexts. Still grounded in living lab frameworks—quadruple helix, open innovation—they can vary in scale and context. In the literature, there is not always a clear demarcation in assessing the work of energy labs beyond their living lab methodological approach. There are reflections on the capacities of energy living labs, for example, to bring together representatives of the quadruple helix innovation approach, with insights on their ability to accelerate energy retrofit objectives, even in complex historic environments [32,33]. Literature also highlights the centrality of participation in living lab approaches to reduce the “box-ticking” exercises or limited “extractive” interactions with stakeholders in energy projects [34,35]. The new promise of co-creative and collaborative approaches championed by living labs may be especially attractive to those engaging in energy projects, to move away from technology-driven approaches and prepare for the more participatory frameworks of the prosumer-driven energy system. The container of the living lab energy project may prove particularly useful in the context of the interrelated technical and social challenges of the energy transition, where technological solutions are less impactful without associated social influence [19,36,37]. The ENERGISE living lab, for example, a practice-based initiative focused on reducing household energy use across 300 participants in 8 countries, found that the living lab approach guided the process of change, with participants learning together and experiencing a sense of virtual community, which fostered behaviour change [37].

Energy living labs are specific in their focus and often directly harness technology for participant engagement and testing, as in SMARTLAB, where two types of sensors were installed in each participant building. Energy labs have proven effective in capturing the process of technological normalisation, where participants interact with technology and negotiate its use [38,39,40]. But the heightened stakes of technological innovation in research projects can negatively impact full participant engagement. The strong focus on technological innovation at the expense of identifying and addressing social needs can reduce participant agency within lab projects [41]. In recognition of these dynamics, Brown (2020) argues that with the advent of the prosumer citizen, “more explicit recognition of competing theories of value, agency and change” are required [42].

As in urban living labs, energy labs face challenges generating and evaluating impact. They can be overly specific in context and lack transferability [43]. A 2023 review by Campos and Marín-González [44] of twelve European energy living labs in relation to responsible innovation practices found significant challenges in integrating lab findings in real-world policy. Their suggestion, “to enlist early those who will be responsible for applying new policies or solutions (e.g., policymakers, investors) as active participants in the process”, (p. 17) was in place in SMARTLAB with the partnership of the local authority and active engagement with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, the project’s funders. At the same time, the Campos and Marín-González point out that in seeking the active engagement of policymakers in a project, there can be a risk of weakening the heterogeneity of participants—already a demonstrable concern across urban living labs. Although SMARTLAB is not being presented here as an example of a project that has addressed all—or many—of the challenges faced by other urban and energy living labs, there are promising indications that key components of its work are of value for cities attempting collaborative and accelerated energy transitions.

2. Materials and Methods

SMARTLAB drew from experiences of partners who had previously participated in the EU H2020 +CityxChange project in Limerick, during which Citizen Innovation Lab governance was concretised [13]. It harnessed both existing partnerships—three of the five SMARTLAB partners were directly involved in +CityxChange—and lessons learned from the challenges of participation and regulatory change in that project. +CityxChange sought to develop positive energy blocks in Limerick and Trondheim (Lighthouse cities), and although key infrastructural and policy developments were demonstrated, some ambitions towards implementation of a local energy grid could not be fully enacted. Although not run as a living lab project, Limerick +CityxChange partners developed an Innovation Playground Framework to guide participatory actions around “energy citizenship” [14,45]. This work was a building block for the development of the Citizen Innovation Lab, focused on promoting citizen participation with five identifiable characteristics that share some of the key living lab characteristics: information-rich, blended, action-led, citizen-focused and spatial [45]. Drawing on that institutional knowledge, SMARTLAB was thus developed as an embedded living lab project with a structured engagement strategy and a straightforward technical experiment not requiring interaction with the grid or substantial financial investment by participants.

The project had five partners—the University of Limerick, which led overall project management and living lab coordination, Limerick City and County Council, which provided connection to citizens and local stakeholders, and three private partners providing smart technology infrastructure and installation services, analysis of project sensor data, and specialist knowledge of participant heritage buildings. Project participants moved through a series of SMARTLAB journeys, from recruitment, installation, demonstration and evaluation. Each phase was a data gathering exercise, with all engagement opportunities planned to facilitate the development of a robust living lab. Project recruitment—with wide advertisement across the city—involved an extensive pre-project survey to identify baseline information on prospective building types, participant motivations and attitudes to smart technology and the energy transition. Once inducted in the project—with data protection processes harnessed as opportunities to inform participants on smart technology potential—the sensor installation process undertaken by the living lab team in concert with the smart technology partners provided rich data through situated and embedded exchanges within participant buildings. Once participants had sensors installed, project dashboards were made accessible, and information on energy and environmental norms were shared through online media (project website hosting instruction videos), written guides and in-person help sessions.

The project team developed a living lab framework for design and implementation phases, which unfolded as follows:

• First, an exploration phase to understand the overall setting for the project—the policy context and understandings of smartness to inform project baselines, stakeholder identification via persona-based analysis, identification of project boundaries (see discussion of project boundary below) and engagement planning through the design of participant journeys. This work laid a foundation for the co-creation of knowledge within the experiment. Sensor identification and procurement were also undertaken during this phase (M1–6).
• To initiate the experimentation phase, the project ran an open recruitment process, inviting local citizens to participate in two ways: by installing energy and indoor environment sensors and by engaging with the project living lab. A total of 136 applications were received, and participants were selected based on technical and geographical criteria—the ability to install sensors in energy meters and building location within the project boundary (M3–7).
• Sensor installation involved visits to each participating building, often multiple times. Installation experts and living lab team members worked together, and informal semi-structured interviews were conducted. These appointments became valuable research resources supporting SMARTLAB’s focus on capturing the realities of encounters between people, buildings and technology. Participant dashboards were built to give private access to sensor data alongside multiple supports to interpret these data, and cohort data were integrated within a project digital twin. As the installation process took place across several months, and resolving data transmission challenges took more time in some buildings, the amount of time each building was monitored varied. But most participant buildings were monitored for at least twelve months (M7–12).
• Participant engagement post-installation was multi-method, designed to allow for the greatest range of participants to be actively involved. Engagement activities were a mix of open-ended and directed. Ongoing drop-in sessions at the Citizen Living Lab in the centre of the project area took place weekly with structured notetaking by project staff. Three online surveys were conducted at the start, mid-point and close of the project. Workshops and sensemaking activities, both online and in-person, focused on both project objectives—assessing the impact of indoor environmental sensor data, investigating smart technology in historic buildings, for example—and participant-driven issues, such as collaborative action towards retrofitting (M12–28).
• As part of the project’s focus on the development of policy recommendations, two policy fora were conducted with key quadruple helix stakeholders at M16 and M22.
• A shorter experiment within the overall project, “super-sensers”, was performed, in which ten applicants from within the participant pool were chosen to receive extra sensors to monitor all inhabited rooms in their building. This was driven by an interest in comprehensive monitoring as expected within highly rated buildings under the SRI. It also offered further engagement insights and produced additional sensor data for analysis (M18–24).
• A monitoring and evaluation phase involved the analysis of participant sensor and engagement data towards project policy outcomes.

The Figure 1 below illustrates the exploration, experimentation, and monitoring and evaluation phases of the project, as well as listing the core engagement activity types across the project (on the right). Each phase was driven by participant journeys, and each journey has its own detailed diagram, available in more detail in project deliverable D1.1 Plan for Stakeholder Engagement and SMARTLAB Journeys [46]. Each journey was connected both to the policy development process and reporting timelines, with learning loops embedded.

Data collection consisted of two core mechanisms—first, sensor data that were transmitted and analysed centrally, and second, engagement data that were collected throughout the project timeline. Sensor devices for the project were chosen using criteria established by the requirements of the SRI, and the team fixed on the Vutility Hotdrop sensor (Vutility, West Jordan, UT, USA) to meter electricity usage and the Milesight AM307 sensor (Milesight IoT, Shenzhen, China) to report on environmental conditions. The project team identified that the most effective approach to sensor monitoring would be wireless data transmission, limiting invasive wiring works and avoiding the use of tenant or occupant data networks—both for data protection and to limit the impact of digital poverty [47,48]. Sensors provided feedback to tenants and occupants directly via e-ink screens with legible readouts. This paper does not include the results of sensor data, as the focus of this paper is examining the work of the project’s living lab, wherein the data generated by project sensors were primarily harnessed as an engagement tool. Project sensor data, in line with open data principles, were anonymised and hosted publicly and have been harnessed as part of the project’s wider reporting and recommendations [49]. Within the living lab, findings of notes in sensor data—for example, the high levels of indoor humidity beyond national benchmarks—were reflected in high levels of participant engagement on this topic (see Section 3).

Engagement data collection was driven by living lab approaches prioritising multi-stakeholder participation and active engagement while harnessing the project’s real-life setting. The multifaceted and community focused approach was designed to capitalise on the impact of social relations to influence behaviour change [50]. The regular interactions designed into participant journeys harnessed evidence from other studies showing public preferences for direct engagement with experts in participatory research [18]. The project drew on action research methods as embedded in living lab approaches, as action research not only enhances participant engagement pathways but also is well positioned to support projects with policy advocacy priorities [51]. For example, project researchers in SMARTLAB installed project sensors, which proved very helpful for developing demystification and sense-making materials as well as enhancing individual interactions with participants (

Table 1. SMARTLAB data collection methods, response numbers and types.

Formal Data Collection	Semi-Structured Data Collection	Group Session Data Collection
Application form (136 responses)	Installation interviews (70 buildings visited)	Indoor environment data info session (8 participants)
Opening Survey 1 (9 responses)	Follow-up visits (22)	Workshop for historic building owners (11 participants)
Midway Survey (22 responses)	Super-senser and u-value installation interviews (20)	Collaborative energy exploration session (6 participants)
Final Survey(31 responses)	Drop-in visits to CIL (27)	Policy fora (2 sessions, 9 policy stakeholder participants at each)

).

Engagement data were collected across three different mechanisms—formal data collection through online surveys featuring both closed and open-ended questions for quantitative and qualitative analysis, systematic notetaking and reporting templates from semi-structured and open-ended participant interviews and discussions, and data from group sessions and workshops, such as collaborative Miro boards. Project surveys were analysed using qualitative research methods and software (Qualtrics, Provo, UT, USA, current version), coded to arrange data via thematic analysis around behaviour change and future intentions. In-depth analysis of the quantitative data drawn from workshops, interviews and building visits lent further insight. The data collection strategy was responsive to the project context with many participants with varying levels of connection to project aims. It sought to encourage reflexive and open participant engagement over more formal and potentially demanding data collection methods. This strategy was successful in developing opportunities for learning loops within project implementation and in generating rich insights from participants. Data collection and analysis were conducted on an ongoing basis, reflecting insights from Bhatta et al. (2025) that “learning is not merely a single activity or a moment of action in the context of living lab projects. Instead, it is a continuous and iterative process that includes multiple activities that lead to specific outcomes” (2) [52].

2.1. Orchestration: Sensor Technology as Engagement Mechanism

The project used the installation of sensor technology—increasing the smartness of participant buildings—to engage participants in exploring their roles in the energy transition. In using smart technology to understand the way their building was managing energy, providing a healthy or unhealthy environment, and costing or saving them money, participants were given information and therefore agency in an energy system that currently offers little, particularly for domestic energy users. The Vutility Hotdrop sensor measured electricity usage and the Milesight sensor measured indoor environmental conditions, including integrated sensors for temperature, light, CO₂ concentration, TVOC, barometric pressure and PIR range 5 m (see Figure 2).

The sensors used a LPWAN citywide network to transmit to a central server, where data were both analysed within the project’s digital twin and hosted in individual dashboards for private access by participants. Due to the city’s high level of historic buildings in its Georgian Quarter, a selected number of u-value sensor readings were also carried out. Participants reported finding the online dashboards difficult to understand, although when supported to interpret data, feedback improved. The indoor environment sensor, as well as sending data to dashboards, also provided feedback to participants directly via e-ink screens with legible readouts. This proved far more effective and influential with participants, where the presence of the monitor at a key location in the building—in a kitchen, bedroom or beside an office desk—drew attention. The emoji-style indicator of overall environmental conditions—smiling, neutral or negative—also captured participant interest and had an impact on both immediate behaviour and future planning for the building.

2.2. Orchestration: Project Boundary and Use Cases

To build a robust frame for the study, it was important to build an accurate as possible picture of the actors within the project zone to guide enquiries and ensure that data gathered would be grounded in a realistic sampling of the current makeup of Limerick city centre. To do this, the project team developed both the project focal area and project Use Cases. Use Cases were based on buildings selected to give an accurate representation of the building stock in the project area in Limerick city. They were fundamental to the grounding of the project in the reality of the contemporary Irish urban context. Key to the discussion of Use Cases in the project was a decision on the project focus area, as any Use Case would have to fit an area profile once this decision was made.

In the original plan for the SMARTLAB project, as represented in the project bid, the project boundary was defined as the Decarbonisation Zone of Limerick city (Figure 3). These Zones were first designated as part of the 2019 national Climate Action Plan, a spatial area to be identified by each local authority, in which “a range of climate mitigation, adaptation and biodiversity measures and action owners are identified to address local low carbon energy, greenhouse gas emissions and climate needs to contribute to national climate action targets” [53]. The Citizen Innovation Lab’s innovation agenda is driven by the Limerick Climate Action Plan, and the Decarbonisation Zone overlaps with the geographical focus area for the Lab’s activities. The CIL ecosystem, which provided the support matrix for SMARTLAB’s intervention in the city, is made up of its geographical presence within the city—a building operated jointly by the University of Limerick and Limerick City and County Council—its layered quadruple helix of stakeholders, and its wider network of influence emerging from legacy projects. This influence was evident in the existing cohort of energy-aware citizens who had previously participated in large-scale energy projects at the CIL and whose pre-existing relationship with the Lab enhanced SMARTLAB access. There are corresponding limitations to the representativeness of engagement data collected in this project as a result (see Section 3).

Intended to provide the backbone for the analytical approach of the living lab, SMARTLAB Use Cases are based on buildings, rather than people, as project objectives relate to the transformation of Irish building stock and how it interacts with a decarbonised energy grid. As a living lab project, however, Use Case variables also took into account the people who use and inhabit those buildings. Accordingly, SMARTLAB Use Cases were developed with three categories: period of building construction, current use of the building, and estimated building smartness level. Use Cases were sutured into the programme of the project, with several Deliverables drawing on the experiences of selected building occupiers and their buildings. SMARTLAB harnessed Use Cases within its project timeline, methodology, and dissemination strategy, and the final Use Cases synthesis is perhaps the most effective way to encapsulate project findings (see Figure 4 below). For more information on the development of project use cases, see SMARTLAB D1.4 Catalogue of Use Cases [54].

Use Cases were designed first to ensure that solutions were designed with the end user in mind, as well as guiding the identification of technical and financial challenges to the development of city-scale infrastructure, SRI-driven upgrades and smart data governance. One of the strengths of the SMARTLAB project was its work across a wide range of buildings and building users, building a picture of a contemporary Irish city amid an energy transition. But this strength is also a challenge—the complexity of the project test area and participant group has generated highly varied results. The project team therefore harnessed project Use Cases to streamline project findings across project work packages, including results of analysis of energy, indoor environmental and u-value data for each building typology as well as highlights from engagement data for each building user type. The Use Case summation also includes tailored insights on SRI potential, smart services and smart infrastructure. As an encapsulation of key project analysis across multiple strands of enquiry, the Use Cases are a powerful communication tool still in use within Citizen Innovation Lab activities.

3. Results

3.1. Impact of Increased Building Smartness Among Participants

The online survey completed by those seeking to become project participants provides a useful baseline for pre-intervention attitudes and motivations among the project cohort. The applicant pool is analysed as a whole, as the exclusion criteria (building address and electricity meter access) were unrelated to questions of motivation and attitude. Applicants (n135) were given open response options to explain their interest in the project, and thematic analysis of motivations to install smart technology and participate in the project identified the following trends:

• Energy Efficiency and Cost Reduction (references to efficiency, cost, reduce, savings, consumption, bills, wastage, usage, electricity, heating, fuel): 107 occurrences.
• Improving Comfort and Living Conditions (references to comfort, heating, insulation, air quality, mold, temperature, humidity, ventilation, health, well-being, living conditions): 40 occurrences.
• Environmental Awareness and Sustainability (references to environment, sustainability, carbon footprint, green, eco-friendly, energy waste, environmental impact, reduce emissions, renewable energy): 24 occurrences.

Other motivations identified included interest in data-driven decision making and in smart technology for its own sake, potential community benefits, and future planning for retrofit. The predominance of energy efficiency and cost reduction motivations at the application stage was clear. The timing of the project application stage in early 2023 coincided with large rises in the cost of electricity to households and businesses in part due to the Ukraine war and with a general trend towards a reduction in fossil fuel use domestically [55,56]. Average electricity prices rising from 23.96 per KwH in early 2021 to 31.72 per KwH in late 2022 likely contributed to applicants’ motivations in this respect [57]. The focus on improving comfort and living conditions occurred less than half as often, with applicants predominantly expressing concern about existing deficiencies in their building—inability to keep the building warm, evidence of mould growth or excessive humidity. Although not dominant within applicant motivations, there was discernible evidence of concern among applicants for the environmental impact of their building’s energy use, demonstrating an interest in sustainability and climate reflective of national sentiment surveys in this area [58].

Across all engagements post-installation, however, participant motivation and interest shifted away from a focus on energy use to strong interest in the quality of their indoor environment. The mid-way survey of participants included a question specifically enquiring about behaviour change—“Has your experience in SMARTLAB so far had any impact on how you are planning for your building’s future?” Of the 16 participants who responded to this question, 50% indicated positively that they had either made behaviour changes or had shifted priorities for future building plans as a result of their involvement in the project. In-person interviews, reports from building visits, and policy fora events reflect a similar trend. Survey responses highlighted changes made among residential participants, for example: “[I am] always opening windows when cooking now, have also bought a few independent humidity sensors for around the house” and “I open the doors and windows to ventilate better. During the winter I probably put on the heater more often than I would have before because I was conscious of the room being too cold from the sensor”. And from commercial participants, including a brewery and a café: “[Sensor data] alerted me to non-dangerous but certainly higher than ideal CO₂ concentrations during peak fermentation days in the brewery and we have started venting more during those times” and “We constantly monitor the carbon levels at busy times. Doors are opened as much as possible, it is great to get an exact temperature range as we know what temperature affects coffee times and yields”.

The impact of smart sensor installation was clearly observed within the SMARTLAB experiment, with particular impact seen in relation to the indoor environmental monitor. The electricity monitor, which fed data directly to a project server and had no live data stream within the building, was less impactful. Of SMARTLAB participants, 60% reported behaviour changes among the residents and users of their building in response to the installation of smart sensors. Some participants noted constraints that prevent them from making certain changes, such as concerns about cold weather or limitations in rented buildings. In many cases, the sensors told them things about their building that they did not know before, particularly in relation to established benchmarks. For many, this was access to a clear indicator of a “normal” or “healthy” indoor environment for the first time, and the living lab facilitated the impact of participant responses to this information across a wide cohort [59]. For those in non-residential settings, the information became directly actionable: participants changed how they managed their logistics and business operations in numerous ways. These changes resulted in more streamlined business processes, healthier outcomes and reported money savings, strong findings for a monitoring-only experiment.

A significant aspect of the SMARTLAB project remit—to assess the impact of increased smartness—is captured in project data around future intentions for participant buildings. Of SMARTLAB respondents, 75% reported impact to future planning for their building. Where respondents indicated new intentions to make changes to their buildings, they plan to:

• Continue to increase building smartness by installing more sensors to harness more building information;
• Purchase dehumidifiers to address issues of humidity and damp in their building;
• Install ventilation systems, such as heat recovery ventilation units.

One finding is that most intended changes expressed in the surveys are designed to improve indoor environmental conditions, specifically air quality. This finding has potential implications for future smart services provision, SRI policy in Ireland and SEAI public engagement. It suggests that indoor air quality is an under-explored aspect of the energy transition in Ireland and a powerful potential asset in encouraging people to reassess their buildings’ future. Working with SMARTLAB participants through the living lab, it became clear that the appetite for further adoption of smart technology is strong, and that people are open to not only the smart monitoring carried out in this project but also for more advanced smart controls. Overall, there is little evidence of scepticism towards such technologies in either monitoring or control—a very positive finding in light of evidence that openness to technology is a key indicator of smart energy and renewables [60].

3.2. Impact of Living Lab Approach

The project’s living lab defined both its engagement strategy and its methodological approach. Working as an embedded living lab, foregrounding the importance of user engagement and harnessing the existing networks of the Citizen Innovation Lab facilitated the conditions that produced valuable insights around project objectives—smart infrastructure, energy systems, buildings, services and the SRI. The analytical tools that define living lab projects were also pivotal in producing grounded policy insights derived from project activities. One example of this was through project Use Cases, which allowed for participant segmentation and behaviour change analysis. Project funder, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, has developed a Behavioural Insights Unit to support the behaviour changes that will underpin Irish energy transition activities. The structured living lab approach with project use cases allowed for the analysis of participant capacities, opportunities and motivations in a form particularly relevant to SEAI goals and working mechanisms [61,62]. The following table (

Table 2. Behaviour change analysis of SMARTLAB participants based on final survey data.

Participant Type	Behaviour Change Analysis
Resident (owner)	Strong capacity to effect change in energy and environmental behaviour, smart technology use and building smartness level. Strong opportunity to effect change in having full control of own building, limited by lack of options in energy and smart services market, financial incentives and community energy schemes. Strongly motivated to make changes, for financial, environmental and health reasons.
Resident (renter)	Medium capacity to effect change in energy and environmental behaviour and smart technology use, with limited capacity to make changes to building fabric, energy source or system. Strong opportunity to embrace smart services when provided, with limited opportunity for non-owners in community energy schemes and retrofit initiatives. Strongly motivated to make changes, for financial, environmental and health reasons, though motivation frustrated by lack of opportunity.
Office and Retail (manager)	Medium capacity to effect change in energy and environmental behaviour, smart technology use and energy source, with limited capacity to make changes to building fabric. Strong opportunity to embrace smart services as part of business model. Access to community energy and retrofit depends on relationship to building (owner/lease/rent, etc.). Strong financial and environmental motivation to make changes, with health motivation lower in non-residential users.
Institution (steward)	Strong capacity to effect change in energy and environmental behaviour, smart technology use and building smartness level, though financial challenges are prominent in older and larger buildings. Strong opportunity to embrace smart services, play a central role in community energy schemes and access specialised funding streams where available. Strongly motivated to make changes for financial and environmental reasons, with sense of legacy a strong motivator.

) draws on the COM-B behaviour change analysis to assess responses from the final participant survey.

This analysis provided another vector on participant engagement data, alongside project Use Cases. This analysis combined the information from participants relating to their buildings, their experience with smart sensors, their financial capacities, and their future plans for their buildings. This allowed for results that could draw out the distinct capacities of different segments—for example, the capacity of residential owners to effect building changes being much higher than that of residential renters, despite strong similarity of motivation. This maps usefully onto project recommendations around the need for dedicated measures to support renters and landlords to draw on smart technology in retrofit planning. Other insights produced included the different access to retrofit incentives, the particular financial challenges facing institutional stewards and the untapped opportunities to leverage strongly positive attitudes to smart technology among building owners.

As part of the evaluation of the project, the team also assessed the project outcomes attributable to its living lab approach (see

Table 3. Impacts and outcomes attributable to SMARTLAB’s living lab approach.

Objective	Living Lab Activities	Impacts and Outcomes Attributable to LL Approach
Smart infrastructure	1 City-wide testing of LoRa network using ~200 live sensors installed in cooperation with owners/users of 70 buildings. 2 Stakeholder engagement with local municipality digital service.	1 Access to participant buildings secured and maintained through relationships built through LL embedded networks. 2 Impact of project insights on smart infrastructure potential in municipality magnified by LL co-creation methods.
Smart energy systems	1 Track participant engagement with sensors, dashboards and data. 2 Support participant collaboration within and beyond the project.	1 Participant engagement instigated project learning loops, producing actionable insights which project team could act upon mid-timeline for greater impact. 2 Participant-led engagement activity fostered city-based connections between participants (expertise sharing, building-level collaborations), which may continue beyond the project timeline.
Smart buildings	1 Development and implementation of Use Cases to guide research. 2 Energy and indoor environment sensors deployment process embedded in living lab research process. 3 Sub-group of “Super Senser” buildings to explore fuller monitoring potential.	1 Use Cases, drawn from LL ecosystem knowledge, streamlined research process from data gathering to policy development coherently 2 LL systemic approach identified building-level opportunities beyond smartness—new retrofit intentions, support for heritage buildings and alignment with future municipality planning.
Smart services	1 Assessing participant interest in services, including data privacy concerns. 2 Using aggregated sensor data to assess service market needs.	1 LL approach captured evolution of participant motivations regarding building smartness, generating valuable insights for future services market
SRI potential	1 SRI upgrade framework drafted, tested with 4H, revised. 2 Sensor data analysis to establish citywide baselines. 3 Participant engagement on SRI.	1 Policy recommendations rooted in analysis of extensive sensor data filtered through participant sense-making.

below). The project team assessed activities, impacts and outcomes in relation to objectives defined at the outset of the project timeline. Some living lab activities (column 2) were programmed as part of project tasks, and others (such as “Super Sensor” buildings) evolved during the project as a result of learning loops. In each case, reflection on the work of the project produced clear evidence of results attributable to the project’s living lab approach.

While other forms of participatory research would have produced some similar outcomes—access to participants and production of engagement-derived data—and other forms of policy-driven research could produce effective policy insights, the living lab approach allowed for the systematic suturing of these and other aspects of the project’s work. Development of a participant panel and regular access to private residences, the private sections of public buildings, offices and retail spaces was a crucial baseline for project activities, and it was made possible by the groundwork of Citizen Innovation Lab partnerships, networks, and previous activities in establishing trust. Active involvement of the local authority as partner—again, supported by its status as co-lead in the CIL—allowed for policy insights to be tailored to be of use by the authority as the primary body responsible for implementation of the county’s statutory Climate Action Plan. Analysis also demonstrated that the SMARTLAB living lab worked to support the participation of citizens in their local energy transition as well as enhancing their capacity to take action in their individual contexts. The analysis and evaluation of the project’s living lab indicates strong potential for supporting the acceleration of climate transition activities in Irish contexts.

4. Discussion

4.1. Project Limitations

As a living lab project, SMARTLAB was designed to gather participant and sensor data towards policy recommendations. Focused on the inner-city core of Limerick, the 70 participant buildings cannot be fully representative for replicability of the study. For example, SMARTLAB participant buildings included circa. 30% heritage buildings, a higher-than-average rate across Irish cities. Although the campaign to draw participants to the project was widespread within city media and on-the-ground leaflet and poster campaigns, results from the application survey indicate that the applicant pool was made up of those already motivated to address energy efficiency in their buildings. The involvement of the municipality and its networks for outreach influenced the makeup of the eventual cohort, with a higher than representative sample of building managers of buildings supported by Council funding. It is likely that some of the positive intentions recorded in the project towards retrofit and investment were attributable to knowledge of institutional funding supports for such measures. The project also identified significant challenges accessing citizens living in rented apartment blocks, both because individual units could not be accessed and apartment buildings did not have communal noticeboards. Apartment dwellers were also limited by the project requirement to have access to an electricity meter, as this request was often refused by landlords. Project policy recommendations highlight this deficit, which is widespread in Ireland beyond the project remit.

4.2. Final Recommendations from the Living Lab

The SMARTLAB project was effective at scoping the potential for technological and social transformation in the Irish energy transition. This is in part due to the embedded nature of the project in Limerick city and to the work of community capacity building undertaken by the Citizen Innovation Lab. The combination of embedded position, sensor technology as engagement and a methodology drawn from innovation processes made this living lab project particularly suited to the socio-technical challenges of the energy transition. This paper did not seek to address the technical findings of the SMARTLAB project across sensor data and smart systems potential, but recommendations from the living lab include those drawn from findings across engagement data, technical insights, and smart system analysis (Table 2). These are illustrative of the capacity of embedded living lab projects to test technologies, initiate new practices and generate policy insights. Below are some key policy recommendations rooted in analysis of sensor data and smart system capacity filtered through participant sense-making.

• Non-energy services will be a driver in the Irish smart energy transition. It was a striking project finding that most intended changes expressed by participants are designed to improve indoor environmental conditions, specifically air quality. The study found that indoor air quality is an under-explored aspect of the energy transition in Ireland and a powerful potential asset in encouraging people to reassess their buildings’ future.
• Smart services should be designed for ease of use. Engagement data in SMARTLAB showed far greater interest in those monitoring services that provided clear and accessible information with definite impact pathways (indoor environment sensing) than in services that required multiple steps to access and drive action (energy sensing).
• Cities or countries considering implementing a deployment of sensors to support SRI objectives need to consider their role in maintaining a credible, safe and protected data sharing environment. A data clearinghouse is a required next step to allow for the development of smart services in this context.
• The project findings indicate the need for a developed peer-to-peer facility for energy services trading in Ireland. These could include over-the-grid trading, as well as partly or fully independent microgrids. When the building type and location is aligned with real time data on energy use, thermal performance and humidity or mould risk, it becomes possible to identify a suite of interventions that might improve the energy performance of a unit. Service providers in this sector, such as consultancies, designers, builders, system integrators and energy transition contractors should be able to access these datasets to craft tailored, data-backed proposals for occupiers.
• The most cost-effective way for Irish building stock to improve SRI ratings would be to target heating systems towards energy efficiency via smart technologies that automate energy use. The most impactful SRI criteria for optimal building indoor air quality and thermal comfort are domains related to the building’s heating and ventilation. Cold and damp conditions were prolific in Limerick city buildings.

The above recommendations drew directly from participant experiences of smart technology within their buildings in SMARTLAB, with the indoor environment sensor in particular generating impact and insight. Recommendations also reflected the collaboration of participants and project partners expert in smart systems and SRI development, allowing for real-world insights generated through sensor familiarisation. Other project recommendations drew on the embedded living lab for evidence, as in the examples below:

• Developing high-trust market scenarios will accelerate uptake. Among the SMARTLAB cohort, there was little evidence of concern for energy and environmental data privacy. This likely reflects the efforts of the SMARTLAB team, notably including the local authority, to establish trust between participant and service provider. As Irish policy is moving towards a market-driven model of smart services, the evidence of the project’s success through relationship and reputation building should be noted.
• As launching customer, the power of local government has significant potential. This role could be more strongly set out in policy documents or city charters. The opportunity is for city authorities to facilitate the development of smart markets as orchestrator and facilitator. This balance of upgraded city-scale communication networks alongside new commitments and mandates from local governments on energy transition initiatives would offer cities a real opportunity to accelerate progress to a decarbonised energy system.
• Once sensors are deployed within buildings, applications offering ‘intelligence-led’ insights and assistance to occupiers will become valuable. A potential benefit in some of these services is community development whereby those with common behaviours or those with physical proximity can be brought together to share experiences and deepen their experience of this technology. There were clusters of buildings within the SMARTLAB cohort that demonstrated the potential for this kind of community or proximity-based approach.

These recommendations derive from the project’s embedded status in Limerick city through the CIL, highlighting the insights gained through relationships established before and during project implementation. The recommendations also identify opportunities that are already in evidence among the project cohort, such as independent collaboration on retrofit planning between building owners within the same neighbourhood. The CIL thus facilitated the participation of citizens and enhanced their capacity to take independent action. These two components are often seen as characteristic of well-functioning urban living labs, but their impact in the energy transition must be supported by wider policy and market supports to gain traction [63,64,65,66]. Recommendations focused on actions to be taken by local authorities are made plausible and de-risked by the involvement of the local authority in both the CIL and the SMARTLAB project. Overall, project recommendations are given weight and legitimacy by the project’s embedded living lab position.

Finally, on policy implications for living lab infrastructure in Ireland, the EU is embedding living lab approaches in its research agenda and the Irish research community should make the most of this opportunity. As an example, one of the five EU Missions, focused on eradicating cancer, is to be enacted entirely through 100 living labs across Europe. The European Network of Living Labs has also signed an MoU with the European Research Council. Living labs appear with increasing frequency in funding calls, and Ireland is well positioned to benefit. Research funding priorities should support research and demonstration projects that are situated within localised contexts. The ability of embedded living labs to develop and leverage public trust is an important resource for myriad transition objectives. Embedded living labs offer a methodological framework that can capture diverse datasets and encompass complex contemporary contexts, and there is strong potential for meta-lab approaches to streamline and enhance the developing living lab infrastructure in Ireland.