“European Solar Days” – From a Successful National Initiative to a Europe-Wide Awareness-Raising Campaign

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Monday, 25 May 2009

Munich, 25 May 2009: The second European Solar Days were celebrated from 15 to 22 May with more than 500 000 citizens participating in 7 000 events in 15 European countries. Solar PV and Solar Thermal are replacing fossil fuels and nuclear energy in Europe.

The European Solar Days are a Europe-wide campaign to promote the use of solar energy for production of electricity, heat and cold. What once started in 2002 in Austria as ‘Day of the Sun’, is now a multi-country effort of thousands of local events organisers ranging from solar equipment manufacturers, to church communities and local governments. In 2008, the initiative was taken to the European level and the first European Solar Days took place in 13 European countries with over 4 000 events.

The second edition of the European Solar Days took place 15-22 May 2009 in 16 countries. More than half a million citizens participated in the more than 7 000 events in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

“The events are as varied as their organisers”, says Uwe Trenkner, Secretary General of the European Solar Thermal Industry Federation (ESTIF). “We have street festivities for children, educational events, exhibitions of solar technologies and much more. And we expect to grow even more in 2010”. Any stakeholder in the solar sector is invited to initiate events that promote the use of solar energy. On the Solar Days website (www.solardays.eu) contacts for each participating country are shown.

Solar energy is available everywhere in Europe and can be used for private and for commercial applications. The trend towards solar energy is not only visible in southern countries such as Spain and Portugal but also to be found in many other countries such as Germany, Norway and Sweden, where there is an ever growing number of photovoltaic and solar thermal installations. “With the right support framework these clean technologies will become ever more important pillars of our energy supply in Europe” concluded Adel el Gammal, Secretary General of the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA).

The European Solar Days are coordinated by ESTIF in close co-operation with EPIA and supported by 24 organisations at a national and European level. Furthermore, the Solar Days are supported by the Intelligent Energy-Europe Programme of the European Communities. 

The European Solar Days are a proud partner of the Sustainable Energy Europe Campaign: www.sustenergy.org

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