GreenLight and GreenBuilding EU award winners announced by the JRC

The winners of GreenLight and GreenBuilding awards, operated by the JRC, have been announced. The awards, which were launched by the European Commission in 2000 and 2005 respectively, encourage member states to reduce their energy consumption and carbon emissions.

The GreenLight programme was won by Dagda town council, Latvia, which was able to reduce its energy consumption in lighting by 85 per cent since 2007. Joint winners of the GreenBuilding category were an office building in Austria and a secondary school in Germany have achieved an 80 per cent saving in energy. The total savings, gathered from the 700 participants across Europe, are around 545 gigawatts per hour annually – the same amount of energy used by two mid-sized European cities per year.

"We congratulate the winners of these awards. Whether public or private sector, they are all living proof that organisations which invest and innovate in energy efficiency can bring immense benefits to themselves while making a leading-edge contribution to a more sustainable Europe,” says Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science and Günther Oettinger, European Commissioner for Energy. “Spreading this kind of best practice, including through award schemes like this, will be a key factor in the economic and environmental success of the Europe 2020 Strategy.”

The GreenLight and GreenBuilding programmes, which are both voluntary, encourage partners to install energy-efficient lighting (GreenLight) and promote energy efficiency in buildings via better insulations, heating, cooling, and intelligent control systems. The JRC intends to publish reports summarising the savings, efficiency measures, motivations and experiences of the partners during the EU’s Green Week in June.

For more information on the programmes, and to see the list of winners, visit the EUROPA website.

Published: Thursday, 15th April 2010 by Tom Freeman

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