Thursday, February 11, 2010

Involving citizens in the production of alternative energy: it could work!

by Eleonora Anello



Even the Colonna Castle, one of the symbols of Genazzano, a small town in the province of Rome, Friday, February 12th will be illuminated only by starlight. The new city council will participate in this way to M'illumino di meno (I will use less light), the energy saving day promoted by Caterpillar, broadcast on air on Radio Due Rai.

This city will involve the schools through an educational activity to be conducted here at the end of school year, which includes the construction of light bulbs through the use of small photovoltaic solar panel extracted from the calculators and other, not well specified, recycled materials.

The assessor of the policies of the environment, waste management and technological innovation, Raffaele Morelli is proud illustrating the educational organized with the schools: «As administration we believe in renewable energy and we want to give a positive signal in this direction. We are already cultivating an educational project on the separate waste collection with the students of “George Boole” high school in collaboration with the Laboratorio di Educazione Ambientale and the Province of Rome; we want to create a similar project for alternative energy, probably with the students of middle and upper-secondary schools, with the ambition to get in elementary school. We want to focus on youth, the future. For us, the awareness of new generations is a necessary condition and a very powerful resource to get to the adults. The adherence to M'illumino di meno part of a series of projects that will start in this 2010. We are going to proceed with the implementation of photovoltaic systems on school buildings and sports facilities of our municipalities. By year-end accounts instead to open the door to door collection».

How did the idea of building light bulbs with solar panels calculators develop?
«From the stimulus of our Vice Mayor, Elena Antonelli, excited to continue and develop the construction of the light bulb powered with photovoltaic panels that appears in the video section of M'illumino di meno Blog. We believe that initiatives such as these may affect our citizens by helping them to understand that the production of alternative energy is not so out of reach. How to say... the knowledge opens the mind».

When we asked the young councillor what message the administration intends to launch with this series of initiatives, he responded us with a memorable joke played by Gene Wilder in "Young Frankenstein", a masterpiece of contemporary comedy: "It could work!”. This is the demonstration that in Genazzano really point in a practical and profitable way on the boys, in a young language, in a comic version, instilling confidence in the new technologies.

And speaking of lights, darkness, light switches, candles, positive poles and negative poles, Genazzano probably won’t be able to revive again the inanimate matter, but we hope its communication campaigns led to the same effects of the cult film written and directed by Mel Brooks who has faced a cinematographic and literary genre in an unusual and winning way.

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