European Solar Days

European Solar Days	is an event lasting from 01 May to 19 May aiming on a national level to raise public awareness of intelligent energy solutions and behaviours, particularly for Solar Thermal and Photovoltaics.[]

The annual "European Solar Day" is  dedicated to increase public awareness of solar energy as an inexhaustible energy source and to encourage more and more people in the European Union to use it and so contributing to reaching of the target of a 20 % share of renewable energies in the EU by 2020.

Compared with other conventional campaigns, "Solar Day" is an extremely cost-efficient form of campaigning. The basic idea for this campaign stems from the concept of "social marketing" which uses existing information channels between associations and organisations and their members (newsletters, mailings, newspapers, etc.) to call attention to the event.

History

 * 2002: Previous "Solar Days" in Austria, Switzerland and Germany since 2002 showed high acceptance by the target groups of the campaign: local citizens, students and pupils. The objective was to expand the "Solar Day" from Austria, Switzerland and Germany towards the "European Solar Days" to five additional European countries in 2008: France, Italy, Slovenia, Spain and the Netherlands.


 * 2002-2007: In the course of the six "Solar Days" between 2002 and 2007 hundreds of people were involved in nearly 2.000 events in local communities, schools and firms in the three countries. More than 100,000 visitors from the surrounding area took part in the activities. Also media responded very positively to "Solar Day" with over 1,000 press releases in magazines, radio and TV quite actively.