The Union of Students in Ireland launches major energy saving scheme
May 29th, 2017
The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) has launched a major energy saving programme uniting students across the EU to save energy at their accommodation.
USI will run a Student Switch Off campaign targeted at students across Irish universities for three years. The campaign is supported by the European Union’s Students Achieving Valuable Energy Savings 2 (SAVES2).
USI is the national representative body for the 354,000 students in third level education on the Island of Ireland.
Four Irish universities – DCU, Maynooth, NUI Galway and UCC- are taking part in year one of the programme.
The campaign will provide ongoing advice and support to students via energy-efficiency and bill management training, peer-to-peer advice sharing via video blogs and regular email and social media communications.
[x_button shape=”rounded” size=”regular” float=”none” href=”http://studentswitchoff.org/” info=”none” info_place=”top” info_trigger=”hover”]Student Switch Off is a not-for-profit international campaign encouraging student action on climate change[/x_button]
The objective is to encourage better energy usage habits in Ireland’s younger generation living in student accommodation.
The USI will identify and train student ambassadors in each dormitory to pass along the message their peers. Dormitories will compete against each other in energy savings in order to win prizes.
The programme also aims to tap into online student communities on social media to raise awareness of how students can save energy in a fun way.
Speaking at the launch of the Irish programme earlier this month, USI President Annie Hoey stressed the importance of developing sustainable energy behaviours in the student body.
“By identifying and training student ambassadors in each dormitory, and by motivating the ambassadors to encourage their peers to save energy, we will create a race between students in dormitories, each competing to save the most energy and win prizes,” she added.
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