CITIZENS FOR ENERGY TRANSITION: Educating citizens on the energy transition, improving practices and multiplying efforts Erasmus Project

Project Title

CITIZENS FOR ENERGY TRANSITION: Educating citizens on the energy transition,
improving practices and multiplying efforts

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Energy and resources; Pedagogy and didactics; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

The transition towards sustainable energy systems is at the heart of climate change and sustainable development issues, and is key for the European Commission to reach its climate energy package’s goals for 2020: a 20% reduction in its greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990, a 20% share of renewable energy in its energy consumption and a 20% improvement in energy efficiency.

The project “Citizens 4 Energy Transition” (C4ET) aimed in this context to enhance citizens’ involvement in the energy transition by improving and extending the methods and tools used to raise their awareness and train them on this issue. Although a large number of initiatives in this field already exist, there was a real opportunity to overcome certain barriers by launching a pan-European initiative which would build on the sharing of visions, expertise, and practices of partners concerning the education of citizens on the energy transition.

C4ET involved 6 European partners, led by the French non-profit organization ENERGIES 2050, representing 6 European countries (Belgium with Homegrade Brussels, Croatia with DOOR, France with ENERGIES 2050, Germany with GNF, Hungary with TREBAG and Italy with Molise verso il 2000). These organizations are CSOs, a public body as well as a private company, all active in the field of educating citizens on energy and environmental issues. The main target groups for C4ET were representatives of organisations working on the education of citizens, especially on these issues (CSOs, NGOs, municipalities, associations etc.), and to a larger extent all European citizens.

The main desired impacts of the project for each stakeholders involved were as follows:
Participants from partner organizations – improved skills for educating citizens on the energy transition; sharing knowledge and best practice; improved offer of pedagogical activities thanks to the tools developed.
CSOs: access to new pedagogical materials and tools to broaden and enrich their training/awareness raising activities with citizens on the energy transition and raised interest for conducting such activities among stakeholders not yet active in the field
Citizens: raised interest and enhanced participation in the energy transition.

In order to reach these objectives, project partners developed a set of innovative pedagogical materials and tools, structured according to a defined pedagogical programme around six “focus subjects” (one led by each partner), each associated with the development of five tools and related materials. To summarise, C4ET was based on a comprehensive approach made of several complementary activities:
State of the art of existing methods and tools and needs analysis (O1) for raising awareness and training citizens on the energy transition;
Development of a pedagogical programme taking into account the state of the art (O2) and which builds on the exchange of best practices, expertise and experience among project partners;
Development of 30 innovative and interactive educational tools with their accompanying materials (O3);
Testing of tools developed by target groups to gather feedbacks and refine their development (O4);
Production of dissemination materials (O5), including a comprehensive web platform, videos as well as multiplier events.

The general and specific objectives are summarised below:

General objectives:
– Raise awareness of European citizens on the energy transition
– Contribute to a development that is sober in energy and with low impact on the climate
– Reinforce adult skills and competencies in the field of energy transition
– Help citizens to identify energy transition as an opportunity for them to find new job opportunities

Specific objectives:
– Identify existing practices and methods being implemented in Europe for raising awareness and for training citizens on the energy transition
– Improve and develop educational methods and material for raising awareness and for training citizens on the energy transition
– Increase the number of CSOs and other stakeholders providing training and educational activities on the energy transition towards citizens
– Encourage the creation of a network of relevant stakeholders involved in educating citizens on the energy transition
– Reinforce skills of CSOs and other stakeholders involved or interested by the field of the education of citizens on the energy transition
– Reinforce skills of European citizens in the field of the energy transition

In fine the C4ET project responded to several of the Erasmus+ programme priorities, including “improving and extending the offer of high quality learning opportunities” and “Strengthening education and training paths of educators”.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 378855,86 Eur

Project Coordinator

ENERGIES 2050 & Country: FR

Project Partners

• TREBAG SZELLEMI TULAJDON- ES PROJEKTMENEDZSER KFT
• GLOBAL NATURE FUND STIFTUNG
• DRUSTVO ZA OBLIKOVANJE ODRZIVOG RAZVOJA
• Le Centre Urbain – Stadswinkel
• Molise verso il 2000 scrl