Education for Climate Community Café - How do you become an Energy Community?

AURORA - Joint event with the Education for Climate Group Community Café 10th September 2025 from 17.00hrs - 18.00hrs Topic School Energy Communities To join the event register here - https://education-for-climate.ec.europa.eu/community/challenge_hub/event/community-cafe-september, This is an exciting event where you can learn about how the Palomeras Cultural Centre School in Spain has pioneered the first school Energy Community in Madrid with the AURORA project. The school, in a working class area of Madrid, has installed solar energy on the roof tops of their buildings, along with two air source heat pumps to keep the classrooms cool in summer. Funds of €140,000 have been raised from their community, staff and parents of the school, along with students and professors from the Technical University of Madrid as part of a share offer. This means everyone can have a stake in the energy transition. Lower energy bills, no capital cost to the school and a small return on investments from everyone supporting the scheme. It really is true that such transformations not only lower carbon emissions, supporting efforts to reach net zero carbon, but they also lower costs by diverting what would have been fossil fuel profits, back into the local community. The renewable energy generated will also be tracked via the AURORA energy tracker app to allow investors to see the energy being generated and to offset their own personal carbon emissions based on the investment they have made. It will join other projects at Aarhus University Denmark and Ljubljana University Slovenia already connected to the AURORA Energy Tacker app . Could schools in your country follow their lead and be the first school in your town, in your city, moving away from fossil fuels towards the future of clean renewable energy. A teacher from the school will explain what it is has meant to the students and staff of the Palomeras Cultural Centre school in Spain. The whole café event will be an opportunity for open discussion, facilitated by Martin Brocklehurst from the AURORA PROJECT, so that you can understand how to follow the lead that has been set. Looking to the future EU Legislation has also recently changed allowing the export of surplus renewable energy from community energy schemes through the grid to be sold to users around the installation. Once enacted into National law this would allow the export of surplus energy from Schools during holiday periods to users around the school. A great idea for public swimming pools for instance seeking to heat the pool during the summer holidays when usage rates are at their highest. The future looks bright for community energy schemes. In the UK, once the Governments strange block on Power Purchase Agreements on public buildings is removed we can perhaps also follow the EU lead and recommence community energy schemes on schools buildings.

The right to contribute to environmental information, a year later: lessons from the SensJus project

The SensJus project would like to invite you all to a hybrid workshop to be held at LocHal, the beautiful Tilburg Public Library, NL, titled ‘The right to contribute to environmental information, a year later: lessons from the SensJus project’ which will take place on July 8, 15:00-17:00 CEST. Find the detailed program at https://sensingforjustice.webnode.it/l/sensjus-nnhrr-workshop/. The event is organized by SensJus and supported by the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research. Speakers will be there at the library with a limited number of ‘distanced’ audience. If you are interested in joining physically in Tilburg, please let me know as places are limited. For everyone else, the livestream and recording will be accessible at https://www.youtube.com/user/BBLTHK. Audience will be able to submit questions in advance to us and we will address them during the event. For registration and submitting questions, please reply to this email. In alternative, audience will be able to post questions and comments live in the YouTube chat. PROGRAM 15:00-15:30: roundtable, what is a right, what is environmental information in a word/drawing/action 15:30-16:00: the concept of a ‘right to contribute to environmental information’ a year after, lessons from the SensJus project 16:00-16:30: experts from environmental justice, social movements and data activism join the debate 16:30-16:45: performance break, ‘the civic sentinel on stage’, performed by theatre actor 16:45-17:00: active drawing on the right to contribute, collective commenting 17:00-17:30: concerned citizens share their viewpoints from local instances to global 17:30-18:00: launching the vignette-based story of civic monitoring in Basilicata There will be drawing, performing, beyond the inspiring pitches from experts and member of communities. This way, we will make sure to ‘engage’ with the space of the library and with the virtual audience! During the workshop, we will present a graphic novel recounting the story of a civic sentinel that we recently realized. Free e-download here: https://sensingforjustice.webnode.it/l/fumetto/.