October launches Energy Awareness Month, a celebratory time in which local, national, and EU leaderships are "leading by example" by providing guidance in energy management and building optimization, energy resilience and security, and the use of advanced and distributed energy technologies. The Energy Awareness Month, with major initiatives happening in the United States, aims to encourage governments and organizations to raise awareness of the importance of sustainably managing energy resources.
One of the first dates in this month is Energy Efficiency Day 2021 (#EEday2021) which puts a spotlight on saving money, cutting pollution, reducing energy waste, and creating jobs.
Walking down the memory lane, we have come across an interesting article by Dr. Steven Fawkes, who breaks down the past 40 years of the evolution of modern energy management and energy efficiency1:
- Phase 1: 1973 – 1981 – “energy conservation phase”
- Phase 2: 1981 – 1993 – “energy management phase”
- Phase 3: 1993 – 2000 – “energy procurement phase”
- Phase 4: 2000 – 2010 – “carbon reduction phase”
In looking at the present and projecting forward two additional phases are identifiable or foreseen.
- Phase 5: 2010 –2020 – “energy efficiency phase”
- Phase 6: 2020 – 2030 – “efficiency as a resource phase”
The sixth phase, the one we are living in, is “a period where we learn to scale up energy efficiency activity and investment by putting together four elements; development and project finance, developing a robust pipeline of projects, building capacity amongst the energy efficiency community, building owners and the financial world, and standardization of project development, documentation, contracting and measurement and verification. The value of non-energy benefits of energy efficiency will be increasingly recognized and valued, both for their financial value but also their strategic value", explains Dr. Fawkes. This is also the period where projects such as COLLECTiEF apply smart devices to the energy system which will bring energy savings and greater flexibility in the long run.
The European Commission celebrates the Energy Awareness Month too, with several events that you must not miss:
• 11th of October: Carbon capture, utilization, and storage forum
• 12th of October: Towards 61 GW of offshore energy by 2030: sharing experiences throughout the EU
• 13th of October 2021: High-level meeting of the Clean Energy Industry Forum
• 20-29 of October: EU Sustainable Energy Week (EUSEW) 2021
The COLLECTiEF project decided the join the pipe, and we will promote public understanding of our energy needs and simple ways to reduce the amount of energy we consume. We have asked our partners to share tips to inspire consumers to take proactive steps to save energy and summarized their contributions in the visual below.
1A brief history of energy efficiency, Steven Fawkes (2016)
