Climate school Berlin-Athens

Climate School Berlin-Athens is a 28-month project aiming to augment the awareness of climate change and energy consumption in the school communities of the Municipality of Athens (MoA).

It consists of 4 axes:

• Training of trainers, training of teachers, implementation of educational activities in 80 pilot schools, dissemination events. All these, in parallel with ongoing field research at the pilot schools, with the participation of the teachers who will be involved to the project.
• Climate protection awareness campaign and creation of a network with the participation of the pilot schools.
• Increase of energy efficiency in the pilot schools (at least 5% reduction of energy consumption per school)
• Development of the MoA action plan for all the schools of the Municipality, aiming at the augmentation of the ecological awareness in school communities and the reduction of Energy consumption in the schools.

School buildings are among the most energy consuming public buildings in the country. The reasons for this situation are

• Excessive use of artificial light
• Not efficient central heating
• No proper thermal insulation of the buildings
• Low awareness of building users which causes enormous energy waste: Lights and appliances remain in operation even when there are no people in the room, the heating or the cooling systems remain in operation all day, even if the ambient temperature does not warrant it etc.

Both teachers and students are not aware that with very simple actions and changes in everyday behavior, we can achieve significant reduction in energy consumption of the school buildings, with all the financial and environmental benefits that will derive from this.

The lack of mobilization is not only due to low ecological awareness, but also to the poor relationship that Greek citizens have with public space. The view that the public buildings belong to the citizens/users and that the waste of energy damages financially all citizens and that, due to the atmospheric heating and air pollution, their quality of life is worsened, is not very widespread in Greece. As a consequence, a significant percentage of pupils and a smaller, but not negligible, percentage of teachers, stand hostile to the school building and do not care to optimize its function.

The project fosters reduction of energy consumption in municipal school buildings during its lifespan and beyond. Project activities and outputs both support the implementation of educational activities towards the aforementioned aim and cater for the collection of reliable data from pilot schools. It envisages the sustainable growth of a network of stakeholders (teachers, students, families) around pilot schools on the subject. i.e. a community of trained teachers who will systematically exchange experiences and ideas for educational activities, the notion of competitions among schools on issues relevant to energy and climate consumption. Good practices in energy management, are expected to play an important role in maintaining interest in pilot schools as well as in motivating other schools of the municipality of Athens, to develop similar activities. Finally, the analysis of the data collected, will contribute to designing an efficient action plan on rational energy use in schools, without big investments in infrastructure, implementable to all schools of Athens.