ABCinEnergy – Advanced tools for Behavioural Change in energy consumption for Higher Education Stakeholders

Content 

In the past decade and especially recent years environmental protection and sustainability became one of the core priorities in Europe. Aside from the European Green Deal, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the recent REPowerEU Plan focuses specifically on saving energy. Europe even increased ambition for energy savings by raising the EU-wide target on energy efficiency for 2030 from 9% to 13%. In this regard, most of the European HEIs have identified priorities in sustainability and do their part to reach the related goals. However, it is not that easy to actively implement the necessary changes, since practical tools and knowledge regarding related KPIs are missing.

Objectives

Based on the considerations above, the ABCinENERGY project sets out to reach the following goals:

• Ensuring European universities Sustainability Strategies’ practical implementation in the area of energy consumption;
• Developing an internal online tool for the education of HEIs community members and the measurement of their behavioural change in the field of energy consumption;
• Providing attractive ways for students and HEI staff to become active participants in sustainability thus fostering knowledge exchange and adaptation of the project results beyond the partnership and the field of higher education;
• Ensuring wide and sustainable access to the ABCinEnergy results among students, HEI staff and management within and beyond the academic field.

Activities

• Creation of an HEIs experience roadmap on Sustainability Strategy implementation, especially regarding the field of energy-related issues;
• Development and testing of an innovative methodology resulting in the Habit Tracker Platform, a digital tool for HEI community;
• Establishment of HEIs working groups & training on monitoring tools for energy consumption;
• Development of action-focused recommendations for community members & HEIs;
• Organisation of local/international events for HEIs students, academic & administrative staff including them in the process of fostering sustainable change.

Resources

• Guidelines for intervention with HEI community members;
• Innovative methodology to monitor KPIs;
• Online Habit Tracker Platform;
• Recommendations for plan of actions fostering sustainability in energy consumption in HEIs;
• User-friendly guidelines for students and HEI staff.

Impact

Participating HEIs and European HEI community empowered with tailored tool (habit tracker platform) to create behavioural change towards sustainable energy consumption in their institutions.

HEI communities becoming change agents for sustainable behavioural change in their communities and in society at large.
Awareness-raising on sustainable energy consumption practices among the European HEI community and society.

Partners

• CESIE ETS (Italy, coordinator)
• WORLD UNIVERSITY SERVICE-OSTERREICHISCHES KOMITEE VEREIN (Austria)
• Minds Europe (Serbia)
• UNIVERSIDAD DE ALICANTE (Spain)
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PALERMO (Italy)
• UNIVERSITE DE MONTPELLIER (France)
• VILNIAUS GEDIMINO TECHNIKOS UNIVERSITETAS (Lithuania)
• University for SDGs (Italy)