Nominees

Applicant: Green Cross Japan Foundation
Project title: Ecological lifestyle via the Environmental Diary
Nation: Japan

Since 1999 Green Cross Japan has been distributing the Environmental Diary to pupils from 6 to 12 years old in order to teach and promote sustainable environmental thinking already in childhood. The Environmental Diary consists of two parts: a guide and the diary pages. The guide explains to children about today’s environmental problems and shows how an ecological lifestyle can help to solve these problems. In the diary pages, over a period of three months the children record important lessons and personal experience. This process influences not only the children but also their social environment (parents, relatives) toward sustainable environmental consciousness. Thus far 600,000 Environmental Diaries have been distributed to children and utilized. In 2008 the program was also launched in Sri Lanka. The NGO-initiated environmental education program Environmental Diary will be implemented in all of Japan.

Applicant: HTL Braunau
Project title: Latent heat buffer
Country of implementation: Austria

At HTL Braunau (technical secondary school for engineering) the future has already begun. Young people and their unconventional, clever ideas make the impossible possible. Their task was to find a way to store solar energy and so preserve it from summer into winter. In their solution, a simple example served as a model and inspiration: the good old pocket warmer, now in larger format and naturally technically refined and developed to serve as a buffer in a house. With their latent heat buffer, students of HTL Braunau were able to store excess energy from thermal solar systems in cold form over a period of several months. This solves the greatest problem of solar technology: long-range storage. Thanks to the ideas of the three students, the storage is free of losses. In cooperation with the Austrian solar enterprise Xolar, a practice-ready 1000-liter prototype has already been produced and in multiple studies its functionality has been proven. Its materials are nontoxic, cheap and readily available. This is an absolutely new development that has never been applied in this form in practice.

Applicant: Rock in Rio / Lobosolar / ADENE
Project title: Rock in Rio school project
Country of implementation: Portugal

The “Rock in Rio Solar School” project of the Rock in Rio Lisboa organization in Portugal motivated Portuguese through a contest to plan projects that combine social and environmental advantages. The best 20 projects won a photovoltaic system for their school; these meanwhile generate nearly 60 KWp of clean energy from 800 m2 of collector area. The installation of the solar systems is intended to make the young generation aware of the importance of solar energy and to direct their interest to problems such as climate change and sustainability. The world’s largest music event of 2008 served as a motivator for participation in the contest. During the concert, solar collectors were installed on the main stage to direct the consciousness of the audience to the importance of sustainable energy. The message reached an audience of 354,000 in Lisbon and 280,000 in Madrid. The project was completed at the end of 2008.