Anthony's Trail: Grundtvig Workshop Round-up

To close up these posts about the Grundtvig Workshop on Sustainable Energy I'd like to share some photos taken by Anthony during his week in Lisbon with the new friends he made from all over Europe. 

• The Participants of the Workshop, from Italy, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Lithuanian and, of course, Malta. 

• A sack race competition with a twist! 

• Chiara (Italy) and Ivelina (Bulgaria) trying out some experiments at the Museum of Electricity. 

• Pedro (Portugal) trying out a solar powered car, not a ferrari, but it works! 

• Jose (Portugal) carrying out some energy experiments and debunking some energy myths. 

• Ulderica, Stefano, Chiara and Fabrizio, the Italians during the inter-cultural evening. 

• Raimond, Annija, Ivo and Juris (all from Latvia) during the inter-cutural night. 

For more info on 5elemento, the NGO that organised the fantastic workshop, or the workshop itself visit 5elemento.org or contact Greenhouse (green.uom@gmail.com) 

Anthony's Trail: A Visit to Edificio Solar XXI

While I (Anthony) was in Lisbon on the Grundtvig Workshop with 5elemento, we visited an interesting "passive building" called Edificio Solar XXI. This is a building which was designed to use very little energy, virtually no external energy is used in the building. 

They did this by incoporating a variety of technology including: 

• advanced insulation systems

• innovative ventilation 

• clever design of blinds and apertures to provide as much natural lighting as possible

• solar collectors for heating water

• photovoltaic cells, both on the wall of the building and also on the parking area (this serves as an energy source and also a shelter for cars!) 

• earth tubes for passive cooling

• a ventilation system which serves as heating thanks to the photovolatic cells 

• and much more clever ideas! 

Check out the powerpoint presentation attached for an explanation on how the building was designed. This was presented to the participants of the workshop by one of the engineers that works in the building.

Ed Solarxxi 5elemento

Anthony's Trail: The Grundtvig Workshop on Sustainable Energy in the Domestic Sector

Anthony, a member of the Greenhouse Exec. had the opportunity to travel to Lisbon to take part in a Grundtvig workshop (http://ec.europa.eu/education/grundtvig/doc984_en.htm) organised by Portugese NGO 5elementos (the fifth element). The workshop was attended by 15 participants from all over Europe (Italy, Latvia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania and, of course, Malta) and the topic of the workshop was sustainable energy, principally in the home.

We will be posting some of the information and experiences from this workshop here, so watch this space!

To start off with here's a link (www.casamais.adene.pt) to an interactive program which allows you to calculate your house's/apartment's energy efficiency and also determine what your problem areas are and what impacts certain changes will have on your energy efficiency. The program is designed for Portugal, allowing you to choose from different regions of Portugal thus customising the environmental conditions. I suppose that selecting a region in the south of Portugal is the best way of approximating Malta's climatic conditions however maybe in the future we will have a similar programme designed for our little islands!