Proceedings including presentations (PDF) and video on demand recordings
Summary
The importance of renewable energy sources is ever growing on an international scale. Yet a sustainable energy policy can only be successfully implemented with the positive attention of children and young grown ups. Still, renewable energies and environmental education face a serious lack of attention - be it in schools, at home or in the media. In order to enhance attention and to provide a platform for international cooperation, the German Federal Ministry for the Environment invited European stakeholders in environmental education ranging from NGOs to school boards and individual teachers to an international workshop in Berlin.
The workshop presented innovative European concepts for environmental education. Berlin school projects, the Polish Energy Bus and participants from all over Europe have presented themselves to demonstrate how environmental education for renewable energies can be improved in practice.
The Workshop "Environmental Education" has been commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in Berlin from 18th-20th of May 2005 in Berlin. It was organised by the Independent Institute of Environmental Concerns UfU e.V. (Coordinator), the Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment and iserundschmidt Consultancy.
Thirteen speakers from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden have been invited to present projects, strategies and different approaches of their national situation and to discuss with the nearly 70 participants about their projects, new approaches and new strategies to enhance the environmental education. The conference was live broadcasted via Internet TV with the support of ManagEnergy. On the website of ManagEnergy all presentation are available as videos on demand: www.managenergy.tv
The first lecture was hold by Daniela Mormile (Italy) who works at the European Commission Directorate- General for Energy and Transport in the Unit for promotion and dissemination of programme results - based in Brussels. The Energy and Transport DG works on supply and demand policies, the support of combined promotion of demand management and supply from Renewables, the development of instruments and the integration of relevant key actors. One of the major goals of the EU is to save at least 1% of energy per year. That raises the question of how to be more efficient? The answer is well known: minimisation of energy waste, increase of the efficiency of power generation units and appliances using energy efficient technologies, reutilization and recycling, improving the transport sector and last but not least change of the social behaviour in order to rationalise the use of energy. Therefore it is important to learn to be more efficient - and in fact to realise that only modifications of behaviour have a long lasting impact. The possibilities of the EU in this respect are restricted. Responsible energy behaviour can not be imposed with centralized policies and measures. Nevertheless, education will be the right choice as a tool. In this regard an integrated approach is needed. All actors - like pupils, local authorities, schools, teachers, parents and energy agencies - have to be involved. The measures should apply to primary and secondary education, adult education and formation and professional training of teachers. On this goal the EU strategy is to collect existing teaching material, to work more closely with the actors, to establish thematic networks, to develop new tools like EU-wide competitions as well as to promote educational initiatives. On the base of these goals the Energy and Transport DG has raised a lot of initiatives: the web platform www.managenergy.net, projects for intelligent energy use in Europe and programmes like Comenius or initiatives for sustainable development. There are some remarkable results within the research projects. For example: Nearly 90% of energy agencies have activities in schools. Their actions concentrate on pupils of primary and secondary classes with projects on energy efficiency. Despite of their engagement there, most of the actors encounter the same obstacles: lack of funding, low interest of school boards and teachers, poor cooperation with educational authorities and integration problems of the projects into regular teaching. Nevertheless, the EU and the Energy and Transport DG will support environmental education. A lot of good projects have been set up. But there is a strong need for further dissemination and further projects. These new projects must consider an important fact: cultural, social economic and language differences must be respect in order to achieve good results in practice.
The second lecture was presented by Christopher Waldén from the Swedish Energy Agency STEM. The Agency is responsible for European Commission Directorate General for Energy and Transport ManagEnergy initiative, which includes the most important website for communication results on questions of energy in Europe: www.managenergy.net. The website contains information on renewable energies and energy efficiency. A wide range of actors like for example energy agencies all over Europe are listed. Further information pertaining to case studies, best practice, programmes and funds are as well provided. The goal of ManagEnergy is among other things to encourage and support networks in Europe. Therefore every energy agency or research institute is invited to post its profile on the website. The website is an ideal communication portal for research and networking. Another goal is the hosting of workshops and conferences. Nearly ten events are hosted by ManagEnergy every year by broadcasting presentations and talks live on the internet and by providing the broadcasts on demand after the event under www.managenergy.tv. The talks and presentations of this International Workshop on Environmental Education are also available as video on demand on this site. The acceptance of the platform has continuously risen since its launch in 2002. Presently, nearly 75.000 pages are viewed every week. On the basis of these results ManagEnergy goes forward. Next intended project will be a European Energy Education portal with websites for youth and for kids.
The proceedings (1888 Kb PDF) of this event go on to describe the other presentations and include speaker abstracts, biographies and slides.
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