Abstract:

The legacy of a healthy and sustainable earth for the new generations is a huge challenge nowadays. There are several ways to reach this goal, a main one being education at all levels. There are studies that show that all citizens from a low level of education to a higher ones have impact on the development, use, and dissemination of information on the renewable energy, RE, and implicitly on the sustainable development. These studies confirm that a high education level leads to a strong impact. These results require a concentrated effort to find the right ways and methods for each age level to teach about RE and their role in sustainable development, and transform them into vectors of dissemination of information. This paper presents adequate methods and tools for all ages to learn and raise awareness of the importance of RE. The sustainability concept is introduced very carefully to be well understood. The methods used are games, puzzles, examples, contests, small projects, experiments, papers, debates, courses and visits. Several surveys were conducted to analyse the effect and the impact of knowledge in RE on different age levels beginning with secondary school. One example is presented in the ensuing paragraph, with its results. CIM Brasov together with Transilvania University of Brasov collaborated in a project - Learning by doing on photovoltaic panels applications. In the beginning, 30 students were involved, from eighth to eleventh grade. Using descriptive survey which is part of quantitative research approaches, they answered a survey about RE and applications. The main three questions were "Have you heard about RE?" with the answers Yes or No; "Can you enumerate some of them?"; "Could you give some examples of applications of RE?". The results were for the first question: 54% no, 46% yes; for the second question: 10% of the 46 % can enumerate 5 types, 22 % 4 types, 34% 3 types, 19% 2 types, and 14% one. 31% from 44% named at least one application. After three interactive presentations about the RE and their applications, the survey was repeated. During the presentations, the students had to solve some word puzzles with the main word a type of renewable energy or an application, as contests. The results are: 100% respond Yes for the first question, 88% named five or more than five types of the renewable energies, and 100% identified at least one application. The next approach was a case study about how the students can achieve a small and simple application of renewable energy and its dissemination. They were split into four groups, and each of the groups chose to practically build an application from the ones discussed: generation of electric energy for illumination with led bulbs for a small house, increasing the energy generation by photovoltaic panels, using a sun tracker, a power station to charge a small electric car and the storage of energy generated by the PV using hydro storage. They were successful in implementing the small experiments and also disseminated them to their colleagues from the secondary school and to the wide public at the Researchers' Night, which is a EU program, attended by many visitors of all ages. The modules were also presented in four scientific articles published in the international students journal EPM, in two consecutive issues, accessible at https://epmagazine.org/issues/42. The main conclusion of this case study is that the students gained knowledge in RE and became promoters of RE.

Keywords:

Education, sustainability, renewable energy, methods.