February 2011

PraTLA launched its kick-off meeting

PraTLA - Practical Training in Local Authorities is the second out of six approved sub-projects from EnercitEE’s 1st Call that launched its kick-off meeting in the Saxon Liaison Office in Brussels on 7-8 February 2011.
The sub-project matches energy efficiency needs of local authorities with know-how from students which is transferred into administration by means of practical trainings. The sub-project expects to involve more than 30 students and 50 local authorities in five regions in the project lifetime.

During its kick-off in Brussels, it came out that the key areas for energy efficiency potential differs significantly in the regions: Saxony and Smaland for example, focus mainly on the improvement of heat generation and the use of RES that are available in their regions.
The region of Haute-Savoie requires solutions on less and more energy efficient ways of transport and the region of Lower Silesia is eager to learn from other regions’ approaches and intends to build up structures and energy management systems in local administration.

A key issue of the meeting was the exchange of good practices and the training approaches in every region. For Haute-Savoie, Eric Brun from CAUE informed on a kind of “walked transport” called Pedibus which is organised by parents for their school kids avoiding individual car traffic during rush hours. In Saxony, a feasibility study for energy self supply of a small rural settlement has revealed that off-grid heat and power supply is possible from a biogas plant that runs of slurry from a nearby pig fattening farm. In addition, Roger Gunnarsson from the Energy agency for Southeast Sweden informed on the lessons learnt from more than 20 years of energy efficiency training in Sweden. For the University of Applied Sciences Zittau/Görlitz as Lead Sub-Project Participant, Dr. Daniel Ludwig emphasised that educational institutes benefit from this international exchange of training methodologies and will encourage students to include other European energy efficiency approaches in their thematic studies.

From left to right:
Christian Borchard, B.&S.U. mbH, Roger Gunnarsson, ESS, Småland (Kalmar and Kronoberg)/Blekinge/SE, Natalia Janik, KARR S.A., Lower Silesia/PL, Dr.Daniel Ludwig, Aaron Sewell, HS Zi/Gr Saxony/DE, Eric Brun, CAUE, Haute-Savoie/FR