Overview
Imagine you live in a city where transport is no longer connected with all its negative externalities, such as congestion and environmental pollution. Imagine that you could walk through the city hearing birds chipping and smelling the fresh air while going to work.
Can such visions become a reality in Central and Eastern Europe, where traffic and road freight transport have been rapidly increasing in the last decade whereas more sustainable forms of freight and passenger transport have been declining? Finding safer, cleaner and quieter alternatives to current transport development in CEI countries is a challenging, but vastly rewarding task, whose success depends on the active involvement of environmental, health, transport and city planning policy-makers and experts from the region, the region's industry and civil society and international financial institutions.
e-Atomium aims to increase the knowledge and competencies of energy agencies, energy advice centres and local authority energy professionals in the field of sustainable energy use in transport.
The project took the following approach towards reaching its objective:
1. It analysed existing knowledge, experiences, needs and aspirations of the target group and examined competencies and skills necessary to work on sustainable energy in transport.
2. It set up didactic strategies and developed training and educational material on 4 aspects of transport and energy savings (selected in co-operation with the target group): awareness raising, transport demand management, mobility management and alternative fuels.
3. It implemented 4 training modules in 6 countries (Belgium, Italy, UK, Netherlands, France, Ireland).
4. During training, business cases were developed together with the trainees.
To guarantee transferability of the training to all EU countries and to ensure continuous quality control, key representatives of energy agencies were involved during the entire project lifespan.
Results
The key result of this project was the dissemination of the training materials, their use in the different agencies, and the positive feedback that the material were well made and easy to use.