Energy Detectives at Schools Winner LEARNING Cat. Sustainable Energy Europe Awards 2011
Student Energy Detectives investigate schools in Austria. A selection of pupils at schools across the country is trained to identify energy wastage at their school and inform their classmates and families about savings. The 'Energy Detectives' project was first piloted in schools involved in the Oekolog network for sustainable education (a government initiative) in the province of Carinthia in 2009-10, in partnership with local electricity supplier KELAG. In 2011-12 it will expand to some 300 Oekolog schools across Austria.
Specially designed teaching materials are used to train 6-8 pupils per school (primary or secondary) in energy saving. Aids include puzzles, questionnaires and flyers. The detectives then head out, identify where energy is being wasted, and suggest what to do about it. Headmasters, teachers and caretakers work with them.
Students have discovered over-heating (e.g. with the windows open), lights on in empty rooms, the standby costs of electrical equipment (e.g. vending machines and photocopiers) over the weekend or holidays, and their own and their classmates' carbon footprints - which they subsequently pledged to reduce.
In Carinthia in 2009-10, the project initially trained up 101 detectives at 13 schools. 2846 pupils were involved in total however, and each promised to inform at least three people in their family neighbourhood about the campaign and how energy could be saved.

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