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Students from Thurles in County Tipperary represented Ireland at the U4Energy Awards in Brussels and brought home the Best Practice Beyond U4Energy award for their Generation Green campaign.
Students Emma Kerwick, Shauna O'Flynn, Lydia O'Toole, Caroline O'Connor, Jennifer Mullally and Mary Claire Hanafin from Presentation Secondary School, Thurles were invited to take part in the U4energy competition following winning the national final of the SEAI's One Good Idea Project last May with the same project.
U4energy is the first pan-European competition on energy education organised by the European Commission which allows students to compete with schools from all over Europe and share their results and projects beyond national boundaries.
For the Generation Green Campaign, the students ran an extensive awareness campaign to make their community more aware of alternative clean energy resources. They used their local supermarket, which installed solar panels under a government grant scheme, as an example of best practice and created a presentation which they delivered to other local businesses. A low energy day was organised by the team in their school and they succeeded in raising awareness as well as reducing their energy consumption by 40% that day.
Commenting on the award, Aoife Cannon, Education Programme Executive with the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) said: "Following winning at a national level, we are delighted that the efforts of the students from Presentation Secondary School were recognised at a European level and is testament to the hard work put in by the students and their teacher, Ms Olivia O'Brien. They won this year's One Good Idea project allowing them to compete in the inaugural pan-European U4Energy Awards. They were up against over 100 schools from across Europe so to come home with an award is an amazing achievement. Students wishing to follow in their footsteps should log onto www.seai.ie/onegoodidea and they could be representing Ireland at the U4Energy awards 2013".
(CD)
