Joint IEE / INTERREG meeting
I had the chance to participate in a joint IEE & INTERREG meeting organised by INTERACT and EACI. The meeting took place in Brussels from 18 to 19 May 2011. The aim was to bring together different programmes and projects dealing with Energy Efficiency and renewable energy sources.
It was great to see the variety of Intelligent Energy – Europe (IEE) projects presented there. IEE is a European tool for funding action to move towards a more energy intelligent Europe.
Besides energy agencies funded by IEE a wide range of projects were present. Among others a projects supporting communities that signed the Covenant of Mayors such as COME2COM or ENGAGE. Other IEE projects aim at bringing together experienced and less experienced local authorities in implementing Energy Efficiency actions such as LEAP or CONURBANT. All projects can be further discovered in the IEE database.
Besides IEE projects representatives of INTERREG IVB and INTERREG IVC were present and contributed to the discussion.
Good practice from Saxony – Excursion to the commune Zschadrass
The commune of Zschdrass is a small community nowadays belonging to the municipality of Colditz in Saxony. Zschadrass is one of the most active communes when it comes to renewable energies and energy saving in Saxony. They are also very innovative in developing new concepts for communal energy production.
According to the Mayor Matthias Schmiedel the commune started looking into their potential of saving energy in order to reduce their operation costs. The local council decided to start with the most visible and the easiest: in this case the street lightening. After 12 pm street lights have to be turned off.
After this they continued to observe the energy saving potential for communal building such as the gym and the school. Additionally, the commune was also looking for possibilities to keep the value added in the region which let also the vision of an energy self-sufficient commune in 2050.
Short presentation of EnercitEE and its blog
Anja Barth, the Project Coordinator of EnercitEE presents the European project on Energy Efficiency and its blog.
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