HOT OR COOL INSTITUTE

Their core work

Hot or Cool Institute is a Berlin-based think tank that analyses the carbon footprint of household consumption and translates climate science targets into practical lifestyle policies and tools for everyday citizens. Their core work sits at the intersection of consumption data, behavioral economics, and citizen engagement — they study what structural barriers prevent people from living within 1.5°C-compatible carbon budgets and design interventions to remove those barriers. They use citizen science, living labs, and co-creation methods to develop evidence-based policy tools that governments and civil society organizations can deploy at scale. Rather than focusing on energy supply or technology, they work exclusively on the demand side: how people eat, travel, heat their homes, and consume goods.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Both H2020 projects began simultaneously in 2021, so the early/recent keyword split reflects two parallel project workstreams rather than a true chronological shift. That said, the distinction is analytically meaningful: EU 1.5 Lifestyles covers the harder economic and policy layer — structural barriers, rebound effects, stock-taking, and communication strategies — while PSLifestyle moves toward data-driven digital tools and citizen science for real-world behavior change. The implied trajectory is from policy analysis toward scalable, citizen-facing tools that operationalize the research findings. If this pattern holds, future work is likely to focus on digital platforms, personalized footprint tools, and direct citizen engagement mechanisms.

Hot or Cool Institute is moving from analysis-and-policy toward building scalable, data-driven citizen tools — making them an increasingly relevant partner for digital sustainability platforms and public engagement projects.

How they like to work

Hot or Cool Institute has participated exclusively as a consortium partner across both projects, never taking a coordination role — consistent with a specialist think tank that contributes focused expertise rather than project management capacity. Despite only two projects, they have accumulated 26 unique partners across 14 countries, suggesting they join well-networked, multi-stakeholder European consortia rather than small bilateral collaborations. Working with them means accessing a niche consumption-behavior expert who plugs into large policy-oriented networks, but without expecting them to lead or administrate the project.

With 26 unique partners across 14 countries from just two projects, Hot or Cool Institute consistently joins large, multi-national European consortia. Their network spans policy, research, and civil society actors aligned with the EU Green Deal and climate action agenda.

What sets them apart

Hot or Cool Institute occupies a rare niche: they focus entirely on the consumption side of climate action — households, lifestyles, and behavior — at a time when most climate research still centers on energy supply, industry, or technology. Their combination of rigorous footprint methodology, citizen science practice, and policy communication expertise in a single small institute is unusual and makes them a high-value specialist in any consortium that needs to connect climate targets to everyday human behavior. For project coordinators building proposals under EU climate or society pillars, they bring credibility in both the analytical and participatory dimensions that most research centers keep separate.

Highlights from their portfolio

• EU 1.5 Lifestyles
  The larger of their two projects (€519,938), it tackles the politically ambitious goal of mainstreaming 1.5°C-compatible lifestyles through systemic policy tools, covering economic impact modeling, structural reform communication, and citizen lab methodology.
• PSLifestyle
  Co-creation focused project that builds a data-driven sustainable lifestyle tool directly with European citizens, combining digital methods, citizen science, and behavior change theory in a single applied platform.