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.

Engaging the society beyond data collection

The challenges of ocean monitoring require data from everywhere at all times, we need to involve society in all steps of the process to achieve the information necessary to implement evidence-based policies in coastal and ocean management. This workshop is a Satellite Activity of the Event “A Predicted Ocean”, an Ocean Decade Laboratory organized in the framework of the United Nations Decade of Ocean for Sustainable Development. The workshop will analyse different challenges in volunteer participation in ocean monitoring projects: from potential barriers for volunteer participation up to how to improve the management of the cost and oceans developing evidence-based policies using in some cases the information generated in these participative processes. REGISTER HERE: https://www.eventbrite.es/e/entradas-workshop-engaging-the-society-beyond-data-collection-in-citizen-science-168961358973 The workshop “Engaging the society beyond data collection” will be divided into two parts: - First part: an overview of lessons learned in previous and ongoing projects. - Second part: moderated discussion (both in English and Spanish) with all the involved actors, including academia, industry, policymakers and civil society WHO CAN PARTICIPATE? This workshop is aimed at all the communities interested in participatory coastal monitoring: Academia, Industry (particularly SMEs), Policy Makers, and Civil Society (NGOs, local groups, environmental associations, Schools, …). PRELIMINARY AGENDA: 1- Welcome and introduction: Jaume Piera (ICM-CSIC) 2- An overview of previous and ongoing experiences: -Ocean Cities. Josep Lluís Pelegrí (ICM-CSIC) -Australian Coasts. Libby Hepburn (CSA) -Wadden Sea. Soledad Luna (W-S World Heritage) -Our Coast. Luigi Ceccaroni (EarthWatch-UK) -Reef Monitoring. Phanor Montoya (Corales de Paz) -Urban Beaches. Andrea Comaposada (Anel·lides) 3- Interactive session: going beyond data collection: -Breakout Room 1. English session -Breakout Room 2. Spanish session