Almada - Ayent - Bielsko-Biala - Bristol - Lausanne - Leicester - Milton-Keynes - Saarbrücken

Display measures designed to change attitudes

The Polish city of Bielsko-Biala (180 000 inhabitants started the Display Campaign at the end of 2004 and is now confronted with the well-entrenched energy-wasting habits of the inhabitants.

Work on improving energy management had already started in the early 1990s. Very rapid progress was made due to energy accounting. This systematically collects the heat, water and energy consumption of public buildings and also provides benchmarking figures for efficient monitoring.

The next step was the creation of a database (called BEN), which reads and constantly updates all the data. Today the energy team is working on a second version of the programme, an extended version for the energy management team and an easier version for the building manager.

Apart from these internal developments the energy team is at the moment occupied with installing "energy-boards" in buildings. The Display poster is a key element of this communication campaign.

Despite great achievements the Display Campaign is confronted with the following problems: incomplete building data and the need to convince the population to adopt more energy aware behaviour. It is still very common in Poland to overheat rooms and not to think about the energy costs.

The Display Campaign aims at helping the team to convince people and to make them more sensitive to energy and environmental questions.