Schools to Receive Subsidy for Energy-saving Efforts

Friends of the Earth (FoE) Japan is an international environmental NGO, and has been working since fiscal 2004 to encourage local governments nationwide to join the FoE "Fifty-fifty" program, in which public schools can receive part of the money they save through reducing electricity, fuel and water costs.

More than 2,000 public schools in Germany have already started with this program. Students, teachers and school facility managers work hand in hand to promote energy efficiency - without making any new investments in energy-saving equipment or installations - and local governments partially reimburse schools for these reduced energy costs. In FY2004, FoE Japan compiled a how-to manual for this program as a model CO2 emission control project that involves community cooperation and promotes energy saving activities in schools, resulting in reduced public expenditure.

For five months in FY 2004 (Sept. 2004 - Jan. 2005), six public schools in Suginami Ward, Tokyo, participated in the program as a model project, and achieved a 0.77 percent reduction of CO2, or a decrease of 1,880 kilograms compared to average emissions over the same time period during the previous three years. They also held symposiums with city officials in charge of similar projects. Encouraged by these results, a total of 62 elementary and junior high schools in Suginami started this program starting with the second semester of 2005. As in the previous year, the ward office distributed posters encouraging energy saving to all the schools. The school children work to save energy, reviewing the use of energy and water in schools on their own initiative, using an "Eco-audit" manual.

Other than these examples in Suginami, five elementary and junior high schools in Oita City, Oita Prefecture started this program in FY 2005 as a pilot project. The local government is supposed to refund to schools half the amounts they save and appropriate from its Environmental Section budget a sum equal to another one-fourth of the savings, for tree planting, etc.

http://www.foejapan.org/en/
http://jccca.org/content/view/1058/620/

Posted: 2005/12/16 10:41:48 AM
Japanese version