Social Acceptability Study (SAS) Network

What is SAS Network

Social Acceptability Study (SAS) network, a platform for knowledge and experience sharing about how we might be able to construct a sustainable society. More clearly, this network will work as green-energy hub: allowing coordinated, strong, timely and sustained information with powerful content and partners. These activities will help us to increase collective intelligence and to create value efficiency while lowering costs. In addition, SAS is an interdisciplinary energy and waste management innovation network located at Aalto University. We bring together practitioners, national and international policy makers, market participants, and researchers from Economics, Environmental Sciences, Engineering, Social Sciences, and Management Sciences to guide and to shape the transformation of the energy and waste sectors. SAS aspires to become the professional body which prepares pro-active proposals and objective assessments for technical, market and policy issues related to global sustainable society. Nevertheless, this network will provide information about how to overcome the barriers to social acceptability aspects to build a sustainable society.

More importantly, SAS hopes to create a new legacy that will help lead to a cleaner environment while fostering innovation, creating jobs and strengthening global economy. The objectives of SAS are:  

Specific objectives:

1. To stimulate new thinking and public and policy-maker awareness and understanding about relationship between technological approaches and behavioural approaches towards green energy production and utilization that is sustainable for people and the planet;
2. To facilitate national and international policies and initiatives that strengthen the development of renewable energy and waste product markets, infrastructure and technology for a more resource-efficient and sustainable society.
3. To increase cooperation between experts in social acceptability research from around the globe;
4. To make regular and structured contacts and cooperation between partners that contribute to the evaluation toward a sustainable planet; more specifically, regular meetings and events of SAS help the  affiliate to discover new opportunities in their field;
5. To undertake joint activities (e.g. publication, seminar\conference\workshop and academic collaboration etc.) of a variety of sustainable topics;
6. To develop trust in biomass based technology;
7. To offer an opportunity to share a broad range of professional expertise from diverse energy communities.

Main Activities:

• Research and teaching
• New / special courses offer
• Mentoring and supervision
• Product design and development
• Market survey
• Organize workshop, seminar and conference
• Organize monthly research presentation
• Regular meetings, e.g., five  times each year
• Annual meeting with SAS Network members
• Election for SAS Network's executive body 
• Annual report dissemination
• Fund raising
• Projects submission
• Networking and advocacy
• Visiting fellowship program (1 month)
• Scientific publications
• Update SAS Network’s webpage

  Members

• Prof. Dr. Jukka Paatero, LUT, Finland
• Prof. Dr. Genku Kayo, Japan
• Prof. Dr. Hasan Mohamed Hamdy, NTNU, Norway
• Prof. Dr. Electo Eduardo Silva Lora, Federal University of Itajubá, Brasil
• Dr. Wang Haichao, China
• Prof. Dr. Zerrin Arslan, Mustafa Kemal University, Turkey
• Prof. Dr. Yukari Tsukada, Japan
• Prof Dr. Nathalia Tejedor Flores,Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá 
• Dr. Karhan Özdenkci, VTT, Finland
• Dr. Dr. Edinam K. Glover, University of Helsinki
• Prof. Dr. Diaa-Eldin A. Mansour, Tanta University, Egypt
• Dr. Md.Abdul Hai, University of Helsinki, Finland 
• Prof. Dr. Karar Mahmoud Badawy Mostafa, Aswan University, Egypt
• Prof. Dr. Mohamed Magdy Fawzy Darwish, Benha University Egypt
• Prof. Dr. Abu Yousuf Md. Abdullah, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh

Social acceptability of using low carbon building: a survey exploration

Enhancement of buildings energy efficiency has typically been approached by viewing the buildings from a social acceptance perspective focusing on multi-level stakeholders. In order to examine social acceptance in terms of public’s opinion and knowledge about using low carbon buildings, a multiple-choice questionnaire was designed with four groups of questions: background information, community perspective, social perspective, and market perspective. The study showed that 59.72% of the seventy respondents’ opinion were using low carbon building (LCB) can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In general, more than 53% of the respondents were willing to upgrade their accommodation to LCB. However, 70% respondents were not ready to hire any consultant because majority of have the problem in paying the upfront cost for LCB.

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