Display Campaign
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The European Display Campaign is a voluntary scheme designed by energy experts from 20 European towns and cities. It is aimed at encouraging local authorities to publicly display the energy and environmental performances of their public buildings, using the same energy label that is used for household appliances.
Towns such as Durham (UK), Charleroi (Belgium), Rennes (France), Helsinki (Finland), and Lausanne (Switzerland) have joined the campaign.
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[edit] Background
The campaign is aimed at needless waste of energy and water in municipal buildings in Europe. This is said[who?] to be due to two key problems: inadequate energy management by the municipalities and/or careless energy consumption habits by building users.
From January 2006, the European Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) placed a legal obligation on municipalities to measure and publicly display the energy performance of their buildings. In response, the Display campaign was set up to help municipalities benefit from these requirements by developing strategies to engage with the public and maximise the rewards of better environmental management of public buildings.
[edit] History of the Display campaign
The campaign, which was started in 2003 by Energie-Cités, the association of European local authorities for intelligent local energy policy, is the first of its kind in Europe and aims to run for at least a decade. The first phase of the project (funded by the European Commission’s environmental directorate) involved the combined effort of 20 pilot towns in 18 countries and four technical and scientific experts. After a period of co-financing in the first half of 2005 it is now funded by the European Commission under the Intelligent Energy - Europe Programme.
[edit] Potential benefits
The Display Campaign aims to help municipalities to improve the performance of their low rated buildings, claiming that a European municipality of 100,000 inhabitants can spend €1.5 million and more on the energy requirements of its public buildings.
Other claimed advantages are that every local authority:
- can communicate with citizens by showing the initiatives to the public.
- display an eye-catching poster which is easily understandable by the public.
- can raise awareness concerning energy and water consumption amongst users and managers of municipal buildings.
- obtain instant access to an efficient, user friendly and pragmatic internet-based tool.
- will become a member of an innovative European Campaign to combat climate change.
[edit] Towards "Class A"
Every year, the public authorities which have the best results for their communication campaigns will be presented with the "Towards Class A Award". The Award is open to all municipalities and local authorities throughout Europe who are members of the Display Campaign. The applicants are evaluated by an independent expert jury.
[edit] The first winner
In 2006 the award ceremony took place in Riga (Latvia) and the first prize was awarded to Bristol (UK). It was chosen because of its original and creative approach to developing excellent communication materials. Inspired by the tools proposed by Display, Bristol developed:
- A huge poster of 6m², which was hung on the outer wall of the CREATE Environment Centre
- A weekly poll in the City Council intranet on a topical subject to evaluate the public response to the poster.
- Four types of awareness-raising posters on energy saving at the workplace
- Two different types of Display postcards, which were sent to each employee in the Council building
[edit] See also
- Energy conservation
- European Union
- Greenhouse gas
- Sustainable energy
- Renewable energy
- Climate change
[edit] References
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