Analyzing technology adoption trends to develop effective low carbon policies for heterogeneous housing contexts

The adoption of technologies in the building and mobility sectors is a key lever for the decarbonization of cities. Innovations such as high-performance thermal insulation, heat pumps, district heating networks, electric vehicles, and electric bicycles can significantly contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving energy efficiency. However, the uptake and diffusion of these technologies remain low, and the understanding of the adoption patterns is still limited especially at the urban scale. In the literature, photovoltaic panels and insulation adoption are well documented, but works that focus on heat pumps, E-Bikes and the co-adoption of technologies are limited. Even fewer provide spatialized data that allow for an analysis of the heterogeneity of patterns among different neighbourhoods. Furthermore, competing measures such as car free mobility and air conditioning needs to be considered together with the first set of technologies to assess the sustainable low carbon pathway within the urban environments. In a nutshell, a lack of knowledge and methodology at the city level to asses the technological co-development, while these actors are at the forefront of the climate change policies. The aim of this article is to develop a modelling method for describing co-adoption patterns on an urban scale, with a particular focus on adoption gaps, i.e. the people and neighbourhoods where adoptions are most likely to occur. The Lausanne conurbation in Switzerland is used as a case study. To this end, adoption and co-adoption patterns are described and adoption gaps, defined as the proportion of potential adopters, are computed and analysed. By distinguishing and mapping different segments of the population, we identify barriers and propose public policies to promote broader adoption. In the case of the Lausanne conurbation, the data analysis reveals that technology adoption patterns are highly spatialized. While absence of car and thermal insulation are the most adopted low carbon, they also show limited margin for progress. At the same time, targeted infrastructure development and public support may be required to trigger adoption of measures such as district heating use and E-bike purchase that show high margin for progress.