Abstract:

The basic education in Poland focuses on environmental issues such as garbage segregation, recycling, water saving. The curriculum includes these topics and they are addressed to children and pupils mainly from elementary schools and from gymnasium (junior high school). In Poland, we observed that there are lack of knowledge about pro-ecological behaviours at the higher education level (at the university level) as well as the curriculums do not include knowledge about energy saving and the creation of save- energy behaviour. The pro-ecological behaviours should be created during education process and could focus on three aspects: knowledge, skills and attitudes. The most important of them is attitude and the research conducted by Diaz –Rainey and Ashton underlines this fact [1]. Therefore the main aim of the article is to present new course proposal dedicated to students of technical universities in Polish conditions.
In our article we will present some good examples of non-conventional education project namely “50/50” which was conducted among elementary schools and junior high school (gymnasium). Next we will present the results from our project called ‘Modelling prosumers' behaviour on the energy market’, which is funded by the NCN (National Centre of Science) by grant no. 2013/11/B/HS4/01070. This research adopted a quantitative approach to investigate the social acceptance of renewable energy sources (RES) from household’s perspective in Lover Silesia region in Poland. In our research we identified the correlation between behaviours of households and their willingness to install RES and between some features (including attitudinal variables) and pro-ecological behaviour. We identify segments of the energy end-users who have more pro-ecological behaviour. They are mainly people with the secondary and higher technical education and they are more than 30 years old [2]. Therefore we would like address them appropriate educational course at technical universities. Thus, additionally we conducted survey among students at technical university to verify their pro-ecological attitudes and knowledge focused on economical use of energy.
Based on these results we will create the guidelines for education process at university level focused on knowledge, skills and attitudes. This aspects influence on social acceptance of renewable energy technology implementation which is especially important in Poland, where energy and ecological awareness is on low level. The guidelines could be useful for educational process at technical universities to create one semester course.

References:
[1] Diaz –Rainey, J. K. Ashton. Profiling potential green electricity tariff adopters: green consumerism as an environmental policy tool? Business Strategy and the Environment 20, pp. 456-470, 2011
[2] Ropuszyńska-Surma E., Węglarz M. The pro-economical behaviour of households and their knowledge about changes in the energy market. Energy and Fuels 2016, E3S Web of Conferences Vol. 14, 2017

Keywords:

education, social acceptance, pro-ecological attitude