GAIA (Green Awareness in Action)

The total amount of energy spent in our everyday life (residential use, personal transportation, etc.) is quite significant, reaching up to 40% of the world’s total energy usage. In this context, reducing energy use in buildings by introducing new technologies is very challenging; across Europe, the rates of construction of new buildings as well as the rates of renovation of existing buildings are both generally very low. Thus, in order to achieve the ambitious energy and climate targets for 2020 and beyond, we need a change in citizens’ behaviour and consumption practices.

The GAIA project focuses on the educational community; faculty, staff, students and parents at all levels of education: primary/secondary/high schools and universities. Targeting Energy Efficiency in the context of the educational community is clearly very important due to a number of reasons since raising awareness among young people and changing their behaviour and habits concerning energy usage is key to achieving sustained energy reductions and it will also indirectly affect their immediate family environment, while achieving energy reduction in the school buildings.

GAIA will create an innovative ICT ecosystem (including web-based, mobile, social and sensing elements) tailored specifically for school environments, taking into account both the users (faculty, staff, students, parents) and buildings (schools, universities, homes) that will motivate and support citizens’ behavioural change to achieve greater energy efficiency. GAIA will include also a set of pilots in different countries. GAIA will directly educate over 6.900 users, influence and attempt to transform their behaviour through a series of trials conducted in the educational environment and in homes. We expect a larger number of people to be informed about the activities of GAIA and be positively affected towards an energy-efficient behaviour transformation.

GAIA Partners:

• Soderhamns Kommun
• Ellinogermaniki Agogi Scholi Panagea Savva AE
• Computer Technology Institute & Press “Diophantus”
• Spark Works ITC Ltd
• Eurodocs AB
• OVER Societa Per Azioni
• OVOS Media Gmbh
• National Interuniversity Consortium for Teleccomunications
• Synelxis Solutions Ltd