Considering the important role of municipalities on this issue, the General Council of Savoie and the association ASDER decided to set up the challenge “Effective Municipalities in Energy Savings.” This challenge “EMES” (or C3E in French) aims to raise awareness and supports volunteer municipalities on energy sufficiency. The goal is to achieve energy savings without spending heavy investment, but acting on behaviour change.

The scope can be on public lighting, voluntary schools or even all public buildings according to the will of the town. The concept of volunteering is very important in this Challenge “EMES” because voluntarism field workers, depend the success of actions and therefore savings.

Targets of the challenge:

– Raise awareness of energy efficiency

– Encourage the use of energy savings potentials in public buildings,

– Motivate territorial actors to engage behaviour changes on energy sobriety.

16 municipalities in Savoie are involved in this challenge, which is spread from 1 October 2012 to 1 June 2013!

EMES in figures:

– 48 buildings followed (including 22 schools), 26 public lighting sectors

– 470 000 kWh saved and over 200 tons of C02 avoided during the challenge period 

– 1 € saved per inhabitants in the municipalities involved

– 6,5 % energy consumption saved compared to the reference period

Some examples of achievements by the municipalities participating in the challenge:

– Achieving a precise monitoring of building energy followed by technicians or councillors.

– Implementation of ” energy posters” informing users of buildings on the energy used in the building, the consumption, the cost for the community and a few eco-actions to be taken to reduce them.

– Instrumentation of buildings (temperature, power demand …)

– Some municipalities have tested the extinction of public lighting between 1am and 5am

– Training in schools to raise awareness of energy issues and to identify savings actions

A further review will be lead at the end of the challenge, but the results show the relevance of such a highly complementary device to the support service implemented in Mountee.

A new challenge, with other volunteer municipalities is already planned.

Further informations on the « EMES » challenge on the website of ASDER here (French).