Empowering Students to Create Climate-Friendly Schools

Oliver Wagner (), Lena Tholen, Sebastian Albert-Seifried and Julia Swagemakers
Additional contact information
Oliver Wagner: Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Doeppersberg 19, 42103 Wuppertal, Germany
Lena Tholen: Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Doeppersberg 19, 42103 Wuppertal, Germany
Sebastian Albert-Seifried: Büro Ö-quadrat, Turnseestraße 44, 79102 Freiburg, Germany
Julia Swagemakers: Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Doeppersberg 19, 42103 Wuppertal, Germany

Energies, 2024, vol. 17, issue 9, 1-13

Abstract: In Germany, there are over 32,000 schools, representing great potential for climate protection. On the one hand, this applies to educational work, as understanding the effects of climate change and measures to reduce GHG emissions is an important step to empower students with knowledge and skills. On the other hand, school buildings are often in bad condition, energy is wasted, and the possibilities for using renewable energies are hardly used. In our “Schools4Future” project, we enabled students and teachers to draw up their own CO 2 balances, identify weaknesses in the building, detect wasted electricity, and determine the potential for using renewable energies. Emissions from the school cafeteria, school trips, and paper consumption could also be identified. The fact that the data can be collected by the students themselves provides increased awareness of the contribution made to the climate balance by the various school areas. The most climate-friendly school emits 297 kg whilst the school with the highest emissions emits over one ton CO 2 per student and year. Our approach is suitable to qualify students in the sense of citizen science, carry out a scientific investigation, experience self-efficacy through one’s own actions, and engage politically regarding their concerns.

Keywords: whole-school approach; education for sustainable development; self-efficacy; climate protection concepts; political simulation; living labs; energy efficiency; CO 2 emissions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/9/2199/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/9/2199/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:17:y:2024:i:9:p:2199-:d:1388177

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().