Closing the loop of energy waste in public schools
Buildings are responsible for almost 40% of energy consumption and CO2 emissions in the EU. A third of our buildings are over 50 years old and nearly 75% of them are energy-inefficient. To renovate them all can be very costly. For public authorities such renovation often means a long decision path from choosing the approach, technical and financial solution.
Among the weakest energy performers in central Europe are public school buildings. Local authorities, municipalities, regional government often lack the knowledge about energy efficient performance and related costs. Moreover, they face strict budget limitations and the total number of schools in need of such renovation is considerably high especially in central European cities.
FEEDSCHOOLS came up with new solutions, both technical and financial, helping them to implement renovation activities to make schools ”nearly Zero Energy Buildings” (nZEB) . They developed a toolkit and a web database of innovative best practices for nZEB renovation. Moreover, the loop is only closed when energy efficiency becomes part of the daily routine of students and teachers, so that FEEDSCHOOLS provided open lessons focused on behavioural change in schools, too.
Partners from across central Europe in Bologna, Udine, Graz, Zagreb, Split, Prague, Zalaegerszeg, Warsaw, Konstantynów Łódzki, Slovenska Bistrica and Ptuj have now the ambition to act as role model for the whole region and beyond. Regional authorities in charge, more specifically their energy managers and technical staff, received highly qualified training. Initial project activities showed that they often lack the ability to lead this renovation process and miss the knowledge on how to mobilise private capital.
FEEDSCHOOLS starteddeveloping a carbon footprint and energy efficiency toolkit toprovide a set of different and interconnected web applications. These will ease the auditing process and the renovation of schools to highly efficient buildings, which use almost zero energy. The FEEDSCHOOLS toolkit consists of an application calculating energy savings and reductions of carbon dioxide, a financial application, which will help in choosing the best available financing model, as well as of a catalogue on novel energy efficiency technologies and good practices.
Partner countries tested and validated the web applications in pilot activities in the partners countries: 8 schools were selected in 6 partner regions to test the tool taking into account different climatic data, typical construction characteristics and energy performances. Afterwards they implemented pilot case studies and evaluation of energy efficiency measures to test and identify best practices demonstrating the practical feasibility of such renovation projects.
Since the beginning of the project FEEDSCHOOLS managed to remarkably reduce the energy consumption of public schools. For instance, in one of the schools involved in the project, "G. Ellero" Secondary School of Udine, Italy, the energy saving was 283.021 kWh/year, which means 26.205 EUR saved per year. Everyday we strive to reduce the energy consumption of public buildings and to disseminate the results also beyond our target group. The FEEDSCHOOLS project was lead by ENEA - Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development.
