February 2012

EnercitEE meeting in Annecy/ France

From 31th January to 1st February 2012 EnercitEE‘s Working and Steering Group members met in Annecy, France.

EnercitEE members in Annecy

As it was half time of EnercitEE, the Working Group firstly looked back on the milestones already reached within the project:

• a strengthened partnership of 5 European regions;
• 6 Working Group and 4 Steering Group Meetings in Dresden, Wroclaw, Heraklion, Växjö, Annecy and Bologna;
• a corporate design, website, blog, joint European flyers, regional flyers, EnercitEE roll ups, 4 newsletters, etc;
• 1st Component Seminar in Växjö on “EE heat and power generation and distribution”;
• 1 Good Practice Guide on Energy Efficiency Excellence from EnercitEE regions;
• 1 Policy Advice Seminar in Wroclaw on new instruments for local energy planning and implementation and
• 11 approved sub-projects.

The Working Group further discussed the structure and timeline of the upcoming Policy maker exchange in Växjö taking place from 31st May to 1st June 2012 and the 3rd Component Seminar scheduled for October 2012 in Leipzig.

Working Group meeting, 31st January 2012, Annecy

The Steering Group was informed on the results of the Working Group meeting as well as on interregional activities and outputs from the 11 sub-projects. The discussion on EE topics being on the political agenda of each region has been continued and expected developments were presented from the regional partners.

To foster the exchange of experience among EnercitEE partners the 2nd Component Seminar on “Communication and motivation to increase Energy Efficiency” took place from 1st to 2nd February 2012. On Wednesday afternoon our French partner from Haute Savoie took us on a virtual study visit showing a project of citizen participation in low energy building. Further the EnercitEE partners were introduced on the activities and communication strategy of the French non-profit organisation “Mountain Riders”. Their work is to inform and raise awareness of all the actors of the mountain on environmental issues and for the promotion of sustainable development in the mountains.

The second day of the meeting focused on achieving behavioural change. Christophe Lastennet, an expert of the French organisation ADEME, introduced the topic with his key note speech “Appetit for Change – theory of change” (www.appetiteforchange.net) led the first workshop dealing with the practical implementation. Afterwards selected sub-project leaders shortly presented their experiences and approaches on communication and motivation of citizens within their sub-projects. This was followed by a second workshop discussing together the different regional methods on how to reach different target groups; on success factors for communication and motivation initiatives; and on evaluation of ‘soft measures’.

Pär Wallin, project leader of SCC, shortly presented the sub-project

All in all it was a successful and informative meeting with fruitful discussions. The partners got a good understanding of the different communication and motivation strategies and tools in the regions and certainly had the opportunity to learn from each other.