Climate solutions series: a Swiss community living on 2,000 watts

What does a good life look like when you cap your energy use at 2,000 watts? We take you inside Zurich’s "Hunziker Areal", a car‑free, cooperative neighbourhood turning a bold climate target into liveable daily routines. From shared workshops and tool libraries to efficient buildings and smart mobility, we unpack how design and community can shrink environmental impact while expanding comfort, connection, and choice.

If you would like to see the a video of the Hunziker Areal and read the collection on climate solutions, or to discover more stories, please visit Swissinfo Science.

Jounalist: Kristian Foss Brandt

Video journalist: Vera Leysinger
Host: Jo Fahy
Audio editor: Michele Andina
Distribution and Marketing: Xin Zhang

SWI swissinfo.ch is a public service media company based in Bern, Switzerland. 

Transcript

What 2,000 Watts Really Means

Jo Fahy 0:52

Swissinfo podcasts. What does living with only 2,000 watts actually look like?

Dr Evangelos Panos 0:59

We need to increase awareness of the people. What does this mean to go towards less consumption?

Kristian Foss Brandt 1:06

The Hunziker Areal, it's actually a closely watched experiment. If it succeeds, it could be a model for how hundreds of thousands of people across the country might live in the future.

Uschi Ringwald 1:18

People often associate sustainability with giving things up. The general trend in society is to spend money, go shopping, travel, just consume and waste.

Werner Brühwiler 1:27

Ultimately, it's about what is good for me. People, interesting experiences, and I find those here.

Jo Fahy 1:55

So what happened and did it work? Find out in this episode of the Swiss Connection Science Podcast. Hello, I'm Joe Fay. Does the term 2000 W Society mean anything to you? If not, let me explain. The 2000W Society is a framework first proposed by researchers at the Federal Institute of Technology at the ETH Zurich in the late 1990s. It was later adopted as part of Switzerland's long-term energy and climate strategy. The idea was that every person should live using no more than 2,000 watts of continuous energy, such as renewable energy sources, for example. That adds up to roughly 17,500 kilowatt hours per year. And that's about one-third of what the average Swiss consumes. Reducing that number is considered key to achieving Switzerland's climate goals. But what does living with only 2,000 watts actually look like? I've got my colleague Christian Brandt here with me in the studio, and he's going to help me answer some of these questions. Welcome, Christian.

Kristian Foss Brandt 3:04

Hi Jo. It's great to be here, thank you.

Jo Fahy 3:06

So, Christian, the 2,000 watt society is a term that has been around for a while now, hasn't it? But why has it become so important nowadays?

Why Energy Limits Matter Now

Kristian Foss Brandt 3:14

Yeah, well, because suddenly it doesn't feel theoretical anymore. Like energy prices have gone up, uh, food prices have gone up. Um we know that that we have a warming climate. Uh more scientists are talking about the fact that we are we're not really aligning to the the Paris Agreement anymore. So it's becoming something that we actually feel uh in our everyday life. Uh yeah. The the 2000 VAT society poses a very practical question. What does a good life look like if we stay within the planet's limits? And that feels much more urgent now than it did 10 years ago when we had the the the climate agreement in in Paris.

Jo Fahy 3:55

So where are people using most of their energy in their daily lives? Where does that happen?

Kristian Foss Brandt 4:01

Well, we usually think of energy in terms of heating our homes or getting around, and that really is a big part of it, especially cars and flying. But once you kind of zoom out, a lot of energy is hidden in everything that we import. Uh food is a good example, especially meat and dairy. And the same goes for clothes, electronics or furniture. Most of that energy is used long before the product ever reaches Switzerland. So living with less energy is isn't just about turning down the heating. It's also about what we eat and what we choose to buy.

Jo Fahy 4:38

And that's a really interesting point because you told me earlier that you and your family have actually been conducting your own experiment in greener living over the past few years, which also inspired you to work on this story. And did you try and personally meet this 2000 watt target?

Kristian Foss Brandt 4:53

Yes, I I went kind of nerdy about it. I I I also tried to use AI to find out how much do I actually need to use in order to get under this 2000 watt society. I think me and my family are very close, but that's a big reason, is probably due to that we don't fly anymore. So we only take night trains on holiday, for instance. We also don't have a car, we don't own a car, so most of our daily travel is by bike or by public transport. And then at home, of course, we use a heat pump, we have solar power. Um, I eat vegetarian. The rest of the family does too, mostly because I do. Um, so of course, our diet changes. Um, when you put all of that together, our biggest energy drivers are already quite low. We are not perfect at all, but in everyday terms we're living pretty close to the 2000 watt target.

Jo Fahy 5:48

Okay, so let's hear more about the people in Switzerland who are consistently living the 2000-watt lifestyle, those residents of Zurich's Hunziker Areal housing complex. You visited the site recently with our multimedia journalist, Vera Leysinger. What's it like there?

Hidden Energy In Stuff We Buy

Kristian Foss Brandt 6:03

Yes, so the Hunziker Areal was built by a cooperative. It's in a neighborhood on the northern edge of Zurich. And it looks like a an ordinary modern housing complex built in concrete, I would say. But it's actually a closely watched experiment. If it succeeds, it could be a model for how hundreds of thousands of people across the country might live in the future. The the 13 buildings there they feature energy efficient lighting and appliances, but they also have shared workshops, and then none of them who lives there have cars, so it's a car-free community. This all together is meant to prove that they can live a comfortable lifestyle, which is also a lower energy one.

Werner Brühwiler 6:58

Just having a vehicle for fun isn't allowed here. I have to make a choice. If I want to move into the housing development, I have to give up my car.

Kristian Foss Brandt 7:09

One of the founding members who has lived at Hunziker since it opened in 2015.

Werner Brühwiler 7:20

Simply using it to commute to work isn't enough. However, we have a collective car sharing membership with mobility. As soon as I have a rental contract here, I automatically become a mobility member. And we also have our own vehicles, electric cars that we manage and operate ourselves. It was only here that we realized how great this whole sharing concept is. This idea of sharing has expanded into other areas as well. For example, the workshop. I use it to cut my boards to size. I wouldn't have that if I had to equip myself with everything on my own.

Uschi Ringwald 8:21

I think that's a good idea. You're making me realize that I should send you to the workshop because when I set the plants up here, I'm going to need some wood underneath them.

A Family Tries The 2,000W Life

Kristian Foss Brandt 8:38

Within a decade, the Hunziker neighborhood has cut emissions and inspired similar projects across Switzerland. For every square meter of built space each Hunziker Areal emits about 16.5 kilo of CO2 equivalent during normal use. A figure that is 20% lower than the operational emission caps set by the 2000 Watt certification. Its buildings also use around a quarter of the energy of an average Swiss residential building. That's thanks to efficient heating, hot water systems, and ventilation. But the project also shows that sustainability is as much a social challenge as a technical one. Here is Uschi Ringwald.

Uschi Ringwald 9:24

Sustainability also means being sustainable when you're doing the laundry. That's something many people find so difficult to do that they simply don't do it. For me, sustainability also means taking part in the residence meetings. Our rule is that they should take place once a year. We manage to do it once a year.

Werner Brühwiler 10:04

So when renting out the apartments, we made sure to reflect the population of Zurich in terms of age, background, and so on. And that means, of course, we now have all the kinds of people you find in Zurich. Not everyone has the same knowledge or the same resources. And we need to find ways to model sustainable behavior for these people too, in the hope that they might adopt it one day.

Kristian Foss Brandt 11:02

Water use is lower than average thanks to efficient fixtures, shared laundry rooms, and rain water collection for gardens. Small design choices like these make sustainability part of daily life, without requiring many conscious lifestyle changes. But to really reach the 2000 Watt target, it also requires adapting daily routines. In Hunziker Areal, ideals often collide with daily habits. Cutting back on meat, for example, is one of the most effective ways to reduce individual carbon use. Yet the share of residents eating little or no meat has dipped slightly. Since sharing space can be a more ecologically sound way to live.

Inside Zurich’s Hünziker Areal

Werner Brühwiler 12:43

Then their compatriots from across the canton of Zurich, or from even further away, come together to celebrate a wedding or another festivity. You see people in colourful clothing. That's how culture enters the space. That was an important goal from the very beginning. For example, we had problems with teenagers making noise at night. Later, it even turned into a small gang conflict, with people throwing firecrackers into the buildings and things like that. It has calmed down now. But there were residents who said, we want to stay here, but at the moment we just can't stand it. The police and the social intervention and prevention teams have now managed to get the situation under control. The problem arose because we're so open and have so many interesting spaces, common rooms and so on. Teenagers from the city who are not from here noticed that and started occupying the spaces. During breaks, students sometimes come into the neighborhood. Teachers as well.

Kristian Foss Brandt 15:13

Even though Zurich has one of the most efficient public transport systems in the world, the city still hosts 467 cars for every thousand residents. That is well above cities like Copenhagen, Amsterdam or Paris, with a broad ownership down to around 250. This small change can pay off. According to the Hunziker Areal, emissions from private transport among their residents have fallen to just 130 kilos of CO2 per person per year, far below Zurich's average of about 800 kilos.

Jo Fahy 15:48

Well, Switzerland is very well known, in fact, isn't it, for its public transport. It's very reliable, it's clean, it's super safe. But what about holidays or international travel for the people who live in this special area? Are there rules for that as well?

Kristian Foss Brandt 16:01

Yeah, many people who live there have been able to eventually part with cars, but one source of emissions remain stubbornly high, which of course is flying. In 2024, air travel alone accounted for around 1.6 tons of CO2 per resident here at Hunziker, more than eight times all other transport combined. That is half the Zurich average of 3.2 tons. Next to flying, Switzerland has another stop-only high source of emissions, products made abroad, such as clothes, electronics, building materials, and food. And that is a tough one to crack. We all like nice things, computer games, phones, or new piece of fashion. How can we make up for this? I asked energy expert Evangelos Panos from the Paul Scherrer Institute .

Kristian Foss Brandt 16:57

Institute.

Dr Evangelos Panos 16:58

We have options, and these options is we price the good to account for environmental externalities. And also we need to increase awareness of the people. What does this mean to go towards less consumption, to go to go towards this degrowth, that it doesn't hurt your well-being. And this can be done in the local communities. So it's a combination of the two. It's a combination of top-down from the government to the citizens, but also bottom-up approach that we learn these things also in uh in our everyday life with information campaigns in schools. I mean, here at PSI, we have many research projects where we go to schools. We go to the to the schools, we play with the children, we educate them. For example, we had recently a musical chair game. You notice that everybody runs and then there is one chair less all the time.

Kristian Foss Brandt 18:09

Oh, yeah, okay, yeah.

Dr Evangelos Panos 18:11

This game uh simulates the competition for resources. Because the chairs are the limited resources, and you have the people that are running to sit in the chairs before the music stops. But one chair is always less.

unknown 18:26

So, what we do when we play this game, either we fail, we don't find the chair to sit, or we cooperate.

Dr Evangelos Panos 18:35

We sit on the legs of another person.

Kristian Foss Brandt 18:37

Okay, okay, yeah.

Dr Evangelos Panos 18:39

This is how we can educate a little bit the children. What does this mean to live in a planet where the resources are not endless? And uh yeah, we we need to do some innovative actions here. Yeah, there are ways.

Car‑Free Living And Sharing

Kristian Foss Brandt 18:54

As much as I like that chair game, I'm not sure how easily people can be convinced to want to live with less. Perhaps it's easier to follow the approach of the Hunziker Areal residence, where many choose secondhand furniture, repair what they can, or share appliances in communal spaces. Neighborhoods like Hunziker proved that low-energy, high-quality living is possible today. According to Evangelos Panos, they cut everyday per capita emissions from heating, electricity, and mobility by around 60% compared to the Swiss average. Still, scaling remains hard. Not everyone lives in city centers and can walk or cycle to work.

Dr Evangelos Panos 19:39

Another option could be we increase the occupancy rate, the passengers that we bring in our car together. We don't drive the car alone. So we use the car in a smart way and not in a selfish way. If for a reason we don't want or we cannot go to the public transportation, maybe we are in a rural area where the connection might not be so good. But of course, this change is to happen, and it means also the government, the will from the policy, and the incentive from the policy. The people will not change alone, and there are many policy measures that can drive us to this direction. This can be financial measures, it can be mandates, it can be information campaigns. None of these measures is a silver bullet. The mandates, when we say, for instance, that uh in Europe that from 2035 the uh new cars should emit zero emissions. And uh, if you want to buy a car which is still gasoline, you will need uh to pay additional higher price. And so this type of mandates, for example, try to force the people. Uh but uh this okay, I don't know. I I I'm coming from Greece. Um I mean like Switzerland uh we are we are loving democracy. So okay, yeah. Yeah, yeah, but that's of course also things that are going to happen, but uh we cannot force them like this, but we can make this uh consume uh this consumption uh more expensive.

Jo Fahy 21:24

Technology can help, but it can't change our lives for us, can it?

Kristian Foss Brandt 21:27

I think it really depends on how you look at things. I would like to come back to Brühlwiller and Ringwald one last time. Despite having had to give up certain things, they say their lives have become better.

Uschi Ringwald 21:45

People often associate sustainability with giving things up. The general trend in society is to spend money, go shopping, travel, just consume and waste. Social media strongly fuels this. And of course, when you look at the richest people in the world, those billionaires and soon-to-be trillionaires, they model this lifestyle and skillfully promote it through social media, as if that's what life is all about. I do think that sustainability, solidarity, compassion, empathy for others, for those who are vulnerable, is declining drastically at the moment.

Werner Brühwiler 22:33

And I need very little consumption for that. What I need are people and connections, I need interesting experiences, and I find those here.

Jo Fahy 23:00

So Christian, did this experiment catch on at all? Are there any other places like this in Switzerland?

Kristian Foss Brandt 23:06

Yes, in fact there are others in Zurich and in several other Swiss cities. As of 2025, more than 30 developments across Switzerland are certified or in the process of being certified as 2000 Wet Sites.

Jo Fahy 23:19

Thank you so much for bringing us this story, Christian. It was a pleasure. And Christian will join us again in our next episode on the Swiss Connection Science Podcast. We'll be diving headfirst into the country's bin bags and talking about food waste. For more science stories, visit our website swisinfo.ch. And you can help others to find our podcast by leaving us a five-star review wherever you get our podcast or tell a friend. Today's episode was recorded and edited by our science and video journalist Michele Andina. For more content, you can check out our website swisinfo.ch. I'm Jo Fay. Thanks for listening.