On March 22, 2024, an international conference on the role of young adult education in the face of the energy transition took place at the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Krakow. The event was organized within the framework of the international project El-Practice: Energy Literacy – practical training on sustainable energy consumption via personal behavior change. Its goal is to support young adults (29–39 years old) in expanding their knowledge and improving their skills and capabilities of sustainable energy use, as well as increasing their self-confidence, leading them to actively engage in the creation of a sustainable society and educating them to take responsibility for their life choices. The event was at the same time part of the implementation of the Climate Pact initiative in Poland.
Anna Fijas, project manager at PNEC opened the conference and welcomed all participants. She also gave a presentation on energy literacy and presented the achieved results of the El-Practice project. The first part of the event focused on an introduction to the issue and the nature of climate education for young adults and an overview of the available tools. The following Dorota Gierszewski, PhD, from Jagiellonian University, introduced participants to the potential of civic education in the face of the energy transition. Then, Karolina Milczarek from the EPALE National Office familiarized participants with the Electronic Platform for Adult Learning in Europe. The platform makes available numerous materials, courses and articles for individual knowledge improvement in various thematic fields. The last speaker during the first part of the event was Paweł Brusiło, representative of the Team Europe Expert Network at the EC Delegation in Poland. In his speech he emphasized the important role of young adults who are the future leaders of the energy transition in Poland, but also in the world.
After a short break, Justyna Janosz-Klus of PNEC and Ioanna Angelopoulou of Innovation Hive (Greece) presented an interactive online course that was developed as part of the El-Practice project. It allows young adults, but not only, to improve their knowledge in the area of climate and sustainable energy use in everyday life. The course is an excellent tool for promoting and shaping changes in habits among young people, related to the efficient use of energy, leading to interaction for a more sustainable Europe. It consists of four thematic modules to dive deeper into the topics of energy literacy, good habits and national and European policies, or the types of investments and subsidies that support energy efficiency.
An interesting part of the event was a panel discussion with the participation of Joanna Heyda from the Warsaw City Hall, Kinga Kowalik from the Marshal's Office of the Malopolska Region, Morgan Janowicz from the Green REV Institute Foundation and Cüneyt Ergörün an Ambassador of the European Climate Pact. The moderator was Darko Kovačič from the Slovenian organization MIITR. The topic of the panel was the role of adult education in shaping a sustainable society. The conversation between the guests explored a variety of perspectives and ideas on effective educational strategies and practical actions that can contribute to creating a more informed and engaged society in the context of working towards a sustainable future. The panelists shared their methods for implementing climate action and the challenges of achieving the Green Deal goals. The inspiring discussion also engaged the audience, who posed additional, much-needed questions. This discussion, and looking at adult education from different perspectives, led to one common conclusion: "We have everything we need - tools, technology, resources - we just need commitment and action. Education is what allows us to bring about change."
The final session of the conference took a closer look at the educational perspectives of young adults in the European Union in the context of the opportunities and challenges they face, taking into account outreach to different social groups. Živa Vovk from KSENNA presented the Slovenian perspective, while Simona Trsinar from REGEA presented the Croatian one. After them, Marzena Wichniarz from the Parents for Future initiative spoke about shaping the behaviour of children and young people towards a sustainable future. Finally, Joanna Wierzbicka-Grajek of the Polish-German Chamber of Industry and Commerce gave a presentation on the Young Energy Europe Program on creating green competencies among employees.
The event was met with great interest from representatives of various organizations working on climate and energy. We would like to thank all the speakers for sharing their knowledge and experiences not only in the presentation form, but also during the exchange of views as part of the panel discussion, or during the discussions during the breaks. We hope that the event was a great opportunity for everyone to enhance their knowledge and make new contacts. We would like to thank all participants for such a large presence and active participation both in Krakow and online!
We invite you to take a look at the online course, which was developed within the EL-Practice project and is available here.
As a part of the CAPABLE project (Building capacity of Public Authorities towards meeting Public Building stock Renovation challenges) also a training e-learning platform on improving the efficiency of public buildings has been developed for public sector employees and building administrators. The course is available here.
All presentations are available on the PNEC website.