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), Salerno (Italy), and Lausanne (Switzerland) have joined the campaign.
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The Campaign is aimed at saving needless waste of energy and water in municipal buildings in Europe. Energie-Cités, the campaign initiator, states that this is due to two key problems: inadequate energy management by the municipalities and/or careless energy consumption habits by building users.[1]
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.[2] 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.
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.
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:
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.
In 2006 the award ceremony took place in Riga (Latvia) and the first prize was awarded to the work of The Energy Management Unit of Bristol City Council (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:
In addition articles about Display and building energy labels were included in the Energy Management Unit's team newsletter, The Energy Echo, and also in Bristol News – the Council's regular newspaper that is sent out to all of Bristol's 200,000 plus households.
In 2007 the first price of the "Towards Class A" was awarded to the Swiss city of Lausanne. Lausanne was chosen because of its strong communication strategy in the municipal administration and its effective promotional activities towards enhanced energy efficiency.[3]