RE-SAVE – renewable energy in agricultural education

Satisfying the need for energy is, along with food security, the most important global challenge. The rising use of fuels results from rapid development of Asian economies (mainly China and India), as well as growing economic momentum in some parts of Africa and Latin America. The Europeans, who are dependent on fossil fuels, are more and more aware of the consequences connected with the emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases which come from the burning of such fuels. The ever growing threat of exhausting the non-renewable resources urges us to search for alternative solutions.

This is why, in 2007, the Council of Europe accepted an energy package “3x20 by 2020” which includes:

• increasing energy efficiency by 20%;
• increasing the share of energy from renewable sources up to 20% of the total energy used;
• decreasing the emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 20% comparing to the year 1990.

The RE-SAVE project – “Renewable Energy Sources for Agricultural Vocational Education”, carried out within the Erasmus+ programme is strictly connected with the energy policy of the European Union. The aim of this international enterprise is to prepare innovative methods and training materials on renewable energy resources. The key issue will be, therefore, a transfer of knowledge and good practices among the member states of the consortium carrying out the project. The leader of the project is the University of Ardahan (Turkey), and the members are institutions, universities, vocational training centres and farmers’ associations from Italy, Germany, Greece, Slovakia and Poland (The Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences is the only Polish partner).

The outcome of the consortium’s activities will be an e-learning platform prepared on the basis of a needs analysis. The target group will include students of vocational and secondary schools of agriculture, farmers and renewable energy consultants. Materials will be produced in the languages of the participating countries and will be accessible to a wide group of recipients.

At the beginning, each of the consortium members described the level of knowledge of renewable energy resources in the rural areas of their own countries and conducted a survey among the target group in order to check the real educational needs. With the data thus obtained an outline of the course and educational platform was created containing 4 thematic modules. We are responsible for the second module concerning biogas plants using biomass as the source of energy in the rural areas themselves – says prof. Barbara Król who will work on the project together with prof. Józef Sowiński.

On 11th and 12th October a coordinative meeting of the project members took place at the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences (UPWr). The members also had a chance to visit the Centre for Renewable Energy Sources at the Institute of Agricultural Engineering at the UPWr, a biogas plant in Strzelin which uses beet pulp as a raw material and a Straw Processing Plant in Jordanów Śląski.