Energy savings, citizens’ engagement and participation, economic and environmental benefits: these are the key-words and objectives of the project “Step by step commitments for energy saving”, funded by the Horizon 2020 programme.
The project, which will last 30 months, has been launched on March 2015 and the first international meeting has been held in Mannheim (Germany) gathering together the 9 project’s partners coming from France, Poland, Spain, Belgium, Germany and Italy.
STEP_BY_STEP aims at suggesting and promoting simple daily actions that can produce important energy saving with linked economic benefits. Have you ever thought that do not defrost the freezer will lead to higher energy consumption with a consequent increase of the bill?!
An experimental phase has been carried out in France (Region PACA) with remarkable results. Now, the project will be implemented in the different areas of the partners’ cities: Gent (Belgium), Warsaw (Poland), Ribera region (Spain) and Cefalù (Italy).
During a first phase, a total of around 6300 households will be involved and registered in an online platform. Then, a team of advisors will accompany these households for 2 years suggesting actions to be undertaken according to households’ profile and habits. This team will also monitor the achieved results and the type of support and/or envisaged action can be changed if the results are lower than the expected ones.
During the project, some “collective challenges” will be also organised involving citizens to collaborate together in view of a common energy saving goal.
CESIE, as Italian partner of the project, will coordinate and support the implementation of the activities in the City of Cefalù (province of Palermo), together with the local city council.
During these first months, all preparatory steps to the fieldwork will be set up and the local implementation phase will start in September 2015.
For further information, kindly contact research@cesie.org.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649733. This communication reflects only the author’s view and the EASME is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
