European Sustainable Energy Week – PLEEC project organizes Energy Days!

The European Sustainable Energy Week is Europe's biggest event to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency and invites public, private and academic institutions to engage in helping to meet the EU's energy and climate goals. It highlights the use of sustainable resources, how to ensure a clean environment, how to secure energy sources and how to reduce energy waste. This year the event took place from 23 to 27 june 2014 and was full of events and activities that attracted politicians, stakeholders and the general public from across Europe!
In order to promote energy efficiency and renewable energies and to share best practices, not-for-profit events, so-called Energy Days, have been organized in Brussels, throughout Europe and worldwide during the entire month of June.

And PLEEC project was an active player! Read here more about the PLEEC Energy Days:

The Research and Transfer Centre "Applications of Life Sciences" of the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences organized the lecture event "Planning for Energy Efficient Cities – Best practices from International Research Projects" on 18 june 2014 at Wälderhaus Hamburg, Germany. At this occasion, representatives of international research projects on energy efficiency presented current strategies to increase energy efficiency on building level as well as on city level.
Starting with Florian Strohmayer from the Technical University of Vienna who presented the first results and insights from our FP7-project PLEEC "Planning for energy efficient cities", Nils Heinrich from the Envidatec GmbH subsequently reported from the progress of the development of innovative façade technologies for zero-emission buildings – which is the central element of the "German-Polish energy efficiency project GPEE" (www.gpee.net).
Last but not least, Dr. Margarete Remmert-Rieper introduced into the FP7-project TRANSFORM which is focusing on smart-city-processes and methods for the development of smart energy plans, with the City of Hamburg being one of the project partners (www.urbantransform.eu).
After inspiring and interesting presentations a final get-together with food and drinks welcomed the audience to get into personal discussion with the speakers and to furtherly exchange knowledge and ideas.
With 40 participants the event was a great success. You can find all the presentations of the event at: http://pleecproject.eu/news/44-review-planning-for-energy-efficient-cities.html

But this is not all: Also the University of Ljubljana was motivated! 

On 19 June 2014 from 9 to 17 hrs, the Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering of the University of Ljubljana hosted the Round Table "Environmental Governance in South Korea and Slovenia".
Besides some important Slovenian representatives (academic, policy makers, non-profit organisations) the event hosted four honorable guest professors from several universities from Seoul, South Korea, who are on a working visit to Austria and Slovenia: Professor Esook Yoon (Kwangwoon University), Professor Tae Joon Lah (Yonsei University), Professor Kyungjun Yun (Hansung University), and Professor Yoonjik Cho (Yonsei University) who are currently lecturing at various universities in Seoul and dealing with issues of environmental management and governance in North-East Asia. As a result of their research work they have recently published a book entitled "Understanding International Environmental Agreements" (in Korean).
Their visit of Ljubljana and Slovenia (18 - 21 June 2014) included the round table on Thursday 19th June 2014, and a visit to the Directorate of Environment at the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment of RS on Friday 20th June, including a guided visit by policy makers and urban planners from the City Municipality of Ljubljana of several sustainable, low carbon and energy efficient projects in Ljubljana. On Saturday 21st June 2014 a guided tour of small towns in the Alpine region of Gorenjska (near-by Ljubljana) was organized with a visit to one of the most attractive tourist destinations in Slovenia - lake Bled with the town of Bled.
The meeting with local representatives brought up different policy and planning practices with new projects in the field of sustainable energy use, water management, eco-tourism, building renewal, etc.

The programme of the round table, short CVs of participants, abstracts and ppts of presentations, study visit descriptions of Ljubljana, Postojna and Bled as well as photographs - are available at:

 

Round Table, 19 June 2014 (http://www.fgg.uni-lj.si/kpp/round_table_2014-06-19/)

Well done this year - we are looking forward to the European Sustainable Energy Week 2015!

Copenhagen is European Green Capital 2014

 

Copenhagen with an area of 74.4 km2, is the capital of Denmark and its most populous city - with a city population of 541,989 (2011). Beside this relevance the city has an important status this year as the European Green Capital. You may ask yourself: How did the City reach this honour? We will explain this to you in the following:

Copenhagen with its approach to eco-innovation and sustainable employment and their focus on developing and implementing green growth is a good model in terms of future urban planning and design and has a high potential for replication in the region around the city and beyond. The city is therefore working together with companies, universities and organizations which are focusing on green economic development. It is also something of a transport pioneer, aiming to become the world’s most practicable city for cyclists. Its goal is to have 50 % of people cycling to their place of work or education by 2015 (35 % cycled to their workplace or school in 2010), helping the city reach an ambitious goal of being CO2 neutral by 2025.

Over the year several activities tackling different green topics are taking place in Copenhagen. For more information see: http://www.sharingcopenhagen.dk/ or visit http://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/winning-cities/2014-copenhagen/ to learn more about Copenhagen, view pictures form the awarding ceremony or read Copenhagens Application for becoming Green Capital 2014.

As you may have noticed already: Copenhagen can function as a role model for what we should focus on in the context of future city planning. So don´t  miss visiting the City, attend some of the events and activities and go green! 

Besides, our second PLEEC Energy Efficiency Forum will take place in Copenhagen this year.

Save the date on 29 october and visit the PLEEC Energy Efficiency Forum at the fair “Building green”. We will keep you updated with relevant news about the event on the project website and here on the blog.