Help the families make the money last longer
With a tight economy situation, one should not pay for wasted energy.
Through simple actions, which only requires reflection and some knowledge households can reduce their energy consumption significantly.
Simple methods as to put the lid on the pot when cooking, defrost frozen food in the fridge instead of in the micro wave. These simple efforts can keep a household energy costs low. The money can be used to other part of the households need.
The Energy Ambassadors campaign aims at tackling energy poverty and in helping families in managing their water, heating and electricity consumptions, through the intervention of social workers that will be trained on these issues. It aims at finding solutions for public in difficulty to save energy and money, and to gain other benefits as comfort and health improvement, and last but not least, to improve their social situation.
The campaign will take place in 9 different European countries.
Energy Ambassadors are people employed in the social sector willing to learn Energy Efficient Principles and disseminate their know-how among fuel poor households.
The group that will play the role of Energy Ambassadors with the public is the social actors (from local authorities, social or healthcare organizations, social housing organizations, etc.), energy providers, owners and tenants (individuals, private and public companies).
The campaign aims at helping the final group: the people in a situation of fuel poverty and/or with low income.
Convince and work with social organizations on the energy issues that are completely linked to the problems they can face as fuel poverty, healthcare and social integration.
The Involvement of social institutions and organisations is seen as the best vehicle to reach the highest number of families in difficulty. We will help through:
The main objective of SErENADE project is to support the enhancement of the range, scope and quality of energy advice provision in the European Community, by enabling an effective exchange of knowledge, experience and tools.
SErENADE target existing and potential energy advice providers, such as energy agencies, advice and information centres, consumer organisations, local and regional authorities and municipalities, small business advisers, customer liaison and advice staff in fuel companies and housing organisations.
The overall project objectives are to increase the sustainability of energy use, reduce associated carbon emissions, and reduce the risk of low temperatures and unaffordable fuel bills in social housing through:
These objectives are achieved by the direct outputs of the proposed action, which will follow a common theme and approach, but the local/regional details of which will be specific to each partner in the consortium so that they can be designed with practical relevance to their own local context.
Local market actors, particularly social housing organizations and residents’ groups, will guide the work through the local forums which will be set up at the start of the project. The relevant market actors will include residents, social landlords, contractors, installers, architects and building services engineers, and the many statutory agencies working with residents of social housing.
The lessons and experience from each the eight local programmes of work in eight countries spread widely across Europe will be shared through the programme of dissemination, giving a wide-ranging and interesting result with applicability to the rest of Europe and a high potential for replication.
The project have dealt with interconnection issues for electricity generation using small RES & micro-CHP applications for home and small business power solutions in the EU-27, through a set of promotional and dissemination actions. These actions aimed to exchange information, to introduce guidelines for homeowners for small RES & CHP applications regarding selection, dimensioning, interconnection, power quality and safety issues, to establish a European web portal for homeowners, to disseminate the European experience in the field through workshops involving local market actors and policy makers in the participating countries and a final event for the exchange of European experiences and dissemination of best practices.
Other projects for energy efficiency in households, are:
ISEES: Improving the Social Dialogue for Energy Efficient Social Housing, for more information: energy efficiency in buildings
„Energy Efficient Residential Lighting Initiative” EnERLIn, for more information: energy efficiency in buildings