UseITsmartly

"useITsmartly" develops innovative solutions to facilitate young people's capacity building of "smart IT use", and ideas on how to reach them with the topic environmental impact through IT use.

Client

Intelligent Energy Europe, European Commission

Contact
Duration

2013-2016

Partner
  • Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany (coordination)
  • Danish Building Research Institute, Denmark
  • Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Netherlands
  • Dune Works B.V., Netherlands
  • Smart Homes, Netherlands
  • Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
  • Umwelt-Bildungs-Zentrum, Austria
  • Lokalernergi, Denmark
Projektbericht

For young people, IT use is an important part of their everyday lives. For the majority, however, awareness for environmental impacts of IT use and knowledge of how to save energy while using IT devices is still missing. The invisibility of the seemingly immaterial, virtual services and goods and their effects on energy demand and on the environment are a challenging field of action connected to Europe’s 2020 goals.

“useITsmartly” wants to close this gap by developing innovative solutions to facilitate young people’s capacity building of smart IT use and ideas on how to reach them with this topic.

The project idea includes the following steps:

  • mapping of IT user practices and contexts of young people for change in behaviour and technology;
  • exploring innovative solutions and ideas to facilitate and encourage energy-efficient IT practices together with youths;
  • assessing the technical feasibility and impacts of these solutions by experts;
  • developing and implementing IT-peer education in all partner countries, including innovative prototypes visualising aspects of sustainable energy consumption.

Results will lead to a toolbox for relevant stakeholders in the area of energy behaviour change programmes focused on IT and young people.

The IFZ project team, together with Harald Rohracher (Linköping University), is responsible for the scientific coordination of the project and leads the two work packages ”process evaluation and impact“ and ”communication“.

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