Energy education for sustainable urban localities

Working together for a green, competitive and inclusive Europe

The policies needed throughout Europe to tackle the multiple challenges of climate change, energy security and energy poverty, particularly in the current economic and geopolitical context, all rely on citizens making informed choices and adopting certain behaviours. 
Everything from choosing a suitable supply contract, to correctly assessing energy efficiency investments or consumption behaviour, to offering support to policies that address climate change. 
Without the citizens' informed participation and choice, such policies are unlikely to succeed. One important element, particularly relevant to the Romanian context, is that small urban localities are often left outside the public discussions on energy policies.
While rural localities face their own specific challenges, large urban areas benefit from more resources, more administrative capacity, better infrastructure, better education, and other elements that favour better local energy policies and better implementation of national or international norms.
In the context of the current European energy transition the current National Resilience and Recovery Plan allocates most of its efforts to urban centres. 
However, towns are outside both contexts, lacking the necessary resources, yet facing similar challenges when it comes to energy needs and uses in the residential sector.
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ENERTOWN aims to address these needs at the level of small urban towns, by empowering citizens as consumers with the knowledge required to navigate the complexities of the energy markets in times of economic, climate and security crises and transformations, by targeting community leaders (decision-makers, private institutions and civil society organisations) with a train-the-trainers approach. 

These community leaders will benefit from customised training programs, delivered online and onsite, enabling them to consolidate their understanding and skills regarding renewable energy, energy efficiency and sustainable energy security solutions. 

These key stakeholders will be trained in the required skills to further disseminate the information, by adapting it to a diversity of local audiences in their respective constituencies. Hence, community leaders will be equipped to guide citizens by adopting both proactive and reactive action, by offering information in a manner that helps them make the most appropriate decisions for their situation.

The project goal is to raise awareness and to build competence at the level of public authorities, private entities active on the energy market, and civil society entities, on energy issues impacting quality of life of citizens in small urban localities in Romania. 

We aim to train the representatives of these stakeholders into vehicles of better policy-making, enablers of citizens’ empowerment in relation to energy markets and overall behaviour towards energy.

We aim to create a framework for knowledge which ultimately empowers citizens as consumers with the knowledge required to navigate the complexities of energy markets in the times of economic, climate and security crises and transformations.

 

Project implementation

The project “Energy education for sustainable urban localities – ENERTOWN” is funded by Innovation Norway through EEA and Norway Grants 2014 – 2021 

https://www.innovasjonnorge.no