Energy saving is now learnt at school and the success of the IUSES - Intelligent Energy at School project, now awarded an international prize, proves it.  Fabio Tomasi of AREA Science Park, European coordinator of IUSES, received today the Energy Globe Award for Italy during a ceremony held at the Province of Trieste headquarters. The award is a prestigious international prize, rewarding every year in different countries innovative projects in the fields of sustainable energy and energy efficiency. The overall organization of the award was carried out in cooperation with the Trade Section of the Austrian Embassy (Advantage Austria) in its Padua Office.

IUSES, born to promote the intelligent use of energy sources and sustainable mobility among high school students and teaching staff, involved young people from 12 European countries. The project started off with one question: how can we educate a large number of young people to interact properly with energy and the environment in the shortest possible time? Starting from the young - was the answer - in turn passing their knowledge and accrued virtuous principles on to their parents. A method that IUSES was able to exploit in the best possible way. Target groups were clear: students and teachers. 15 partners from 12 European countries were involved in the testing stage, with 220 teachers and 20.000 students working on their environmental awareness.

The set of materials (the so-called IUSES tool box) - comprising four manuals, multimedia animations, slides and a set to carry out experiments - developed within the project was continuously improved through feedback received from users. In the end, IUSES involved a total of 80.000 teachers and students all over Europe. Calculations were made, proving that the ecologically correct behaviour patterns learnt through the project lead to energy savings amounting to 1,1 million kWh. Furthermore, emissions for 3.500 tons of CO₂ were avoided: a quantity of CO2 such, that a forest should work for a whole year to compensate it. Strong with this experience and the accrued know-how, the Italian (AREA Science Park and Immaginario Scientifico, both from Trieste) and Slovenian (the non-for-profit association Slovenski E-Forum) project partners, resolved to raise the stakes with the TESSI-Teaching Sustainability across Italy and Slovenia, currently underway. The project is financed through the Italy-Slovenia Transnational Cooperation Programme.

In the next few weeks, many other Energy Globe Award winners will receive their awards in all continents, with the cooperation of the national Advantage Austria offices. On June 5, on the occasion of the UN World Environment Day, IUSES and the other environment-focused solutions, winners of the national Energy Globe Awards in their countries, will be the online protagonists on the Energy Globe Action Day, supported by UNIDO, UNEP and UNESCO. On that occasion, all the over 150 winning national projects will be presented one after the other - each using 10 minutes and in consideration of time zones - on the www.energyglobe.info web portal. Projects range from high-tech solutions to simple but effective ideas answering to the vast majority of ecological problems, through energy efficiency, renewables and the accurate usage of resources, as water, for instance.

In the framework of this extraordinary, worldwide online Action Day, Energy Globe will furthermore offer citizens the possibility to test freely online their energy saving potentials (Energy Efficiency Check) and to assess, using the online Solartool, how to use and produce solar energy depending on the solar irradiation in each country. The sum of the potential energy saving and of the solar energy potentially produced will be continuously recorded using an online global meter.

After June 5, new projects can be submitted for the Energy Globe Award.

Contacts:

Energy Globe, Austria, Ms. Cornelia Kirchweger, phone: +43 7617 2090-30 cornelia.kirchweger@energyglobe.com

Advantage Austria, Padua Office, Italy, Ms. Ingrid Valentini-Wanka, phone: +39 049 8762530 padova@advantageaustria.org, www.advantageaustria.org/it