Katharina

04 May 2016

EURONET 50/50 MAX aimed at mobilizing energy savings in public buildings through the implementation of the 50/50 methodology in 500 schools and nearly 50 other public buildings from 13 EU countries. Based on our experience in energy saving projects in Germany, UfU developed a 9-step methodology to increase the energy awareness of the building users and to involve them actively in energy–saving actions. Achieved financial savings are to be shared equally between the building users and the local authority which covers the energy bills.

EURONET 50/50 MAX was a continuation of the very successful EURONET 50/50 project which tested the implementation of the 50/50 methodology in over 50 European schools and won the European Sustainable Energy Award 2013! Thanks to EURONET 50/50 MAX, the 50/50 network now spreads across Europe involving new schools and other public buildings.

EURONET 50/50 MAX started in April 2013 and lasted three years. The project was supported by the European Commission through the Intelligent Energy Europe (IEE) programme.

For further information check the project website: www.euronet50-50max.eu

The final guide of the project including information on the methodology and numerous practical examples from all over Europe is available in English as file and as printed brochure: almuth.tharan@ufu.de

14 April 2016

The Fellowship of Lawyer Lekha Sridhar from India ended in March 2016. At a ceremony at the Ministry for Environment, Nature Protection, Construction and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) the Minister Barbara Hendricks thanked the fellows for their terrific work. She also expressed her hopes that the cooperation of the fellows with German organizations on climate protection issues will continue.

Lekha Sridhar held an “International Climate Protection Fellowship” of the Humboldt Foundation and analysed the role of cooperatives in the German Energiewende at the Independent Institute for Environmental Issues. Which impulses her research results could bring for India she summarized in an UfU-Paper: Citizen Energy and Public Participation in Germany’s Energiewende: Lessons for developing countries.

Since March 2016 Thi Binh Minh Hoang from Vietnam is the new Fellow in the “International Climate Protection”- line of the Humboldt Foundation at UfU and is researching potentials of energy plants on contaminated soils.

02 April 2016

Invited by the Association “Energy Efficient Cities of Ukraine” (EECU), UfU supported the project “School of Energy” by sharing its rich experience in running energy saving projects in German schools in a three day workshop in Lviv, by providing project material and by helping to create a box with technical tools.

“School of Energy” has started in January 2016 and will last until October 2016. In total, 25 selected schools all over Ukraine take part. At the workshop in February, teachers and energy experts were trained by educators from the Ukrainian NGO Svit Osvit and from UfU. The main focus of UfU was to prepare the so called pupils’ energy audits together with the energy experts, who will travel to the schools and run the audits together with the kids. First, UfU introduced the energy experts to working with pupils and the tasks and materials for the energy audits were developed. Finally the teachers and energy experts visited Nadiya School in the outskirts of Lviv to make a test run of the energy audit and to visit a master class with experiments on renewable energies run by pupils of this school

In the meantime, the first pupils’ energy audits did already take place in different cities in Ukraine and they all worked well.

The project “Schools of Energy” is implemented by „Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH“ on behalf of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety. And UfU is always happy to share its experience in energy saving and climate protection projects at schools with partners from other countries.