TOGETHER OFFICIAL VIDEO

The official video of the project is available on the You Tube channel. It offers an overview of the project's main activities and goals. The script is available below the video.

Click on the video to watch it.

SCRIPT OF THE VIDEO

Increasing energy efficiency by at least 20% between 2010 and 2020 is one of the key targets of the European Union’s Energy Strategy, which also aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by another 20% by the end of this decade.

Buildings are responsible for 40% of energy consumption and 36% of Carbon Dioxide emissions in the European Union. Compared to new constructions, existing buildings consume five to twenty times more, up to 60 litres of heating oil per square meter per year. And about one third of the buildings are over 50 years old, which makes renovation and retrofitting quite expensive in relation to benefits.

In many Central and Eastern European Member States, notably Slovakia, Croatia, Hungary and Poland, but more generally in all EU countries, public uses (such as education, healthcare and public administration) hold a significant share of non-residential buildings.

This means that by improving the energy efficiency of European public buildings, we could give a considerable push to the EU energy strategy targets by 2020.

Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. In fact, the financial crisis continues to restrain the investment capacity of the European public sector, in this as well as other important domains.

However, new opportunities for energy saving seem to emerge from “low-cost measures” that exploit the engagement and motivation of building users.

The new Interreg Central Europe project TOGETHER tracks these developments and promotes the realisation of 8 energy efficiency pilots in a total of 85 public buildings, distributed across 8 partner cities and regions.

This is done in three steps.

First, by a huge capacity building effort of involved public administration staff, driven by a residential “Training of Trainers” course for building owners, energy managers and policy makers.

Second, by testing the most appropriate combinations of technical, financial and Demand Side Management tools, leveraging contributions from behavioural science, economics and psychology, and delivering them as an integrated Smart Building Management Toolkit.

Third, by codifying the project outcomes into a comprehensive policy package for large-scale implementation, bringing the governance of user communities to the forefront of energy efficiency programmes in public buildings.

Are you a civil servant, a policy maker, a researcher or practitioner in energy management and buildings retrofitting?

If so, you may find interesting to follow and contact us here:

Official project website: www.interreg-central.eu/together

Official Facebook page: www.facebook.com/togetherPRTV2016/

Official Twitter: twitter.com/CE_TOGETHER

Official You Tube channel: www.youtube.com/together