Summary
Note: In September 2007, the coordinator of this case study, the Delft Energy Agency, merged with its partner Energy Agency Zoetermeer to form EREA.
This project was targeted at the student populations in three Dutch cities, among which the city of Delft, The Netherlands. The city of Delft has a large student population because of the location of a Technical University. Studies show that students in The Netherlands have very energy unfriendly behaviour when compared with average citizens. While an average citizen uses 1.000 kWh, a student uses 1.600 kWh on yearly basis. Partly this is because of the way they live together; partly it could be caused by the life phase the students are in. This costs the student about 50 Euro a year (i.e. these are extra costs).
To make students more aware of their behaviour and of the (financial) benefits of saving energy would have for them, the national association of student housing associations - Kences - took the initiative to set up a project which had this goal. In this project all students who live in houses of the participating associations were approached with the offer of getting free advice on how to save energy (and money). Other students who were hired and trained by the Delft Energy Agency gave these advices in workshops. The reason the DEA choose students as advisers in this project is because they stand close to the target group and are best suited to get the message across. An extra incentive for students to participate in the workshops is that at the end they could spend 25 EURO each on energy saving measures.
It is good to mention that the energy advices were part of a larger project in which the student houses were also scanned technically by the Delft Energy Agency (with the instrument called EPA, an "energie prestatie advies", translated it would be a household energy scan). The EPA and the energy advice were brought together in an energy plan per student complex.
Results
These results are not yet known. At the end of 2004 an evaluation of the project will be made. In this evaluation the lessons learned will be collected. The focus of this evaluation will be on the process. Evaluation of results will follow next year, when behaviour changes have had the chance to materialize.
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Education
: Energy Efficiency
: ManagEnergy
: Schools & Colleges
: User behaviour
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Case Study (36 Kb PDF)