- Winner of the Climathon Ljubljana challenge 2020.
- Placed in the TOP 3 Most Transformative Ideas of 2020 in Global Climathon, among 107 competing ideas, received the most public votes in Global Climathon 2020.
- Green Penguin was placed among the TOP 3 finalists in the Nordic Smart City challenge competition 2021.
- Winner in EEPA Awards in Slovenia and in Europe 2021.
- Regional Golden Innovation Award for Green Penguin project 2022.
- Award for Innovation Challenge for Green Penguin project 2022.
The Green Penguin project
The Green Penguin is a Smart City solution that educates and engages residents and supports cities in their efforts to become carbon neutral.
Energy demand is the source of more than 75% of carbon emissions in the EU, and demand continues to grow.
With more than 70% of CO2 emissions coming from cities, we need to tackle the trend of increasing urbanization and the high energy demand that comes with it.
How can we transform energy consumers into engaged citizens who contribute to energy efficiency and participate in creating a carbon neutral city?
Our answer is the Green Penguin. And who is he?
The Green Penguin is a leader of change, a friend, a visionary and a green influencer.
He is here to address the challenges of climate change by raising awareness of individuals, their impact on the environment and their role in sustainable development – starting with children.
He gives them insights and supports them in adopting and applying new, more sustainable habits and behaviors.
The Green Penguin project
The Green Penguin is a platform and application that teaches children, students, parents, and entire cities how to reduce their emissions by using fewer resources, living a sustainable lifestyle, and thus reducing their impact on the environment. It uses smart digital technologies, gamification and quantification to deliver environmental education to reduce CO2 emissions.
Starting with children in schools, this educational game allows them to record their activities and combine the data collected with data on the energy consumption and resources of schools and other buildings.
The resource consumption data is measured, analyzed and visualized in real time. In this way, we get an objective picture of the carbon footprint, transformed in the form of preserved trees, icebergs and rescued penguins, that even children can understand.
Through simple tasks, representations of the impact of everyday activities, and competitions with their peers, children gain new practical knowledge about how to reduce the carbon footprint in their daily lives. In this way, we encourage them to adopt sustainable behaviors where we are all winners together.
With this project, we want to prove that every individual can have an impact on the environment as long as they have enough knowledge and information. This is exactly why we want to target the younger population with the Green Penguin, who will learn about sustainable lifestyles at an early age and then share their knowledge in their community.
Why is the Green Penguin project important?
References of the Green Penguin project
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Green Penguin continues its mission to raise awareness and promote a sustainable lifestyle
Five partners from Slovenia and Norway presented the key achievements and results of the project at a press conference and a closing event.
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Green Penguin inspires at the Altermed & Flora fair
The Green Penguin team presented the Green Penguin interactive platform at the fair to teach kids about energy conservation, carbon footprint reduction, and eating responsibly.
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Inspiring approaches to experiential education for a sustainable future
At the thematic conference in Ljubljana, the Green Penguin project and its partners showcased creative methods of experiential education for sustainability.
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International conference tackles urban decarbonization
The Green Penguin Project and CER, Slovenia’s leading Sustainable Business Network, co-hosted an international conference focused on the challenge of decarbonizing cities.
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Sustainable innovations and education at the E-world trade fair
The Green Penguin project was presented at the recent E-world Energy & Water 2024 in Essen, Germany and received the attention of delegates from global energy companies.
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Exchanging views and planning future steps for the Green Penguin project
The thematic conference was held in Kranj, where the project partners met exchange of views, experiences, and ideas and joint planning for Green Penguin project success.
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An innovative way to raise awareness of sustainable lifestyle
The path to a sustainable lifestyle and environmental awareness is difficult but undoubtedly important. In Kovačnica, Kranj, the project partners recently presented the Green Penguin initiative, an innovative approach to encouraging children to adopt a sustainable lifestyle.
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Educating about sustainable living at Enlit Europe
In recent years, we have seen a constant effort to create innovative solutions that bring us closer to sustainable development. At the recent Enlit Europe trade fair, we had the opportunity to present our project, the Green Penguin, which promises steps towards sustainable solutions, with a focus on educating young people.
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Green Penguin exploring sustainable initiatives in Slovenia
This time, Green Penguin project partners met in Slovenia to discuss and promote environmentally friendly practices, as well as to emphasize the significance of working together to create a more sustainable future.
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Technical day at Hinko Smrekar Primary School
Students at the pilot school Hinko Smrekar Primary School explored the Green Penguin application and talked about what sustainability meant to them as part of a technical day focused on the project and application. The students not only learned how to use the Green Penguin application but also became ambassadors for sustainable thinking in their school environment.
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Linking sustainable education and digital competences
Green Penguin is on a mission to bridge the gap between sustainable education and digital competences. For this purpose, he joined the Digitrajni Učitelj (Digital and Sustainable Teacher) conference, held in Portorož in October.
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The Green Penguin’s journey to Norway
On his journey to raise awareness about sustainable living, Green Penguin visited the beautiful city of Kristiansand, Norway, which is also home to one of the pilot schools testing the new app. Green Penguin’s visit to Norway demonstrated the importance of sustainable practices, education, and raising awareness of individuals’ impact on the environment.
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Promoting a green and healthy lifestyle at the Olympic Festival
Green Penguin joined the Olympic festival, as it presents a great opportunity to meet and raise awareness of a sustainable lifestyle among the kids and their parents. The kids showed a lot of knowledge about sustainability ate the Green Penguin stand.
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Green Penguin promotes eco-friendly lifestyle at the Children's Bazaar
The Children’s Bazaar is the largest educational and family entertainment event in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where Green Penguin presented sustainable initiatives to visitors of all ages.
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Green Penguin inspires sustainable education at Hinko Smrekar Primary School
Hinko Smrekar Primary School in Ljubljana, Slovenia, recently welcomed the Green Penguin as part of its ongoing commitment to sustainable education and environmental awareness.
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Green Penguin inspires young minds at Hack4Climate Hackathon
Green Penguin made a special appearance at the recent Hack4Climate Hackathon organized by Care4Climate and the City of Kranj, in Kranj, Slovenia. The event brought together young people to tackle an international challenge.
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Green Penguin's impact: empowering young minds at Altermed & Greenvita
Our green influencer Green Penguin recently participated in the Altermed & GreenVita fair in Celje, organized by the Eco School in Celje, Slovenia, on the theme of healthy food and nutrition as well as sustainable development.
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Green Penguin joins teachers to present good practices
One of the highlights of the conference was the introduction of the Green Penguin project, an innovative initiative aimed at educating young people about carbon emissions reduction and energy conservation.
Project Green Penguin is partly funded by consortium partners
Iskraemeco’s vision is to bring knowledge into energy. Our mission is to enable energy efficiency, so we created the idea and the Green Penguin consortium. Today, the Green Penguin project is being implemented by a consortium of companies, namely: Iskraemeco, d.d., the City of Kranj, the City of Ljubljana, the Association DOVES-FEE Slovenia and FEE Norway who are implementing the international Eco-Schools programme. The project is co-financed by the Norwegian Financial Mechanism and MCRD (Ministry of Cohesion and Regional Development) in the amount of EUR 764,281.54. The Norwegian Financial Mechanism stands for Norway’s contribution to a green, competitive and inclusive Europe.
Funding partners
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Norway Grants |
Through the EEA and Norway Grants, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway contribute to decreasing economic and social inequalities in Europe and enhancing cooperation with the 15 EU Member States.
The EEA countries share common values and responsibilities with other European countries to promote equality of opportunity, tolerance, security, environmental sustainability and a decent standard of living. |
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MCRD | The Government Office for Development and European Cohesion Policy is responsible for planning and implementing cohesion policy in the Republic of Slovenia and for planning and coordinating national development policy. The Government Office is responsible for the day-to-day management of funding provided by the European Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund and decides on the use of these funds in accordance with the applicable legislation of the European Union. As of 24 January 2023, the new Ministry of Cohesion and Regional Development (MCRD) has taken over all the tasks of the former Government Office for Development and European Cohesion Policy (GODC), including the implementation of the Norway and the EEA Grants 2014-2021, as well as the area of regional development. |
Leading partner
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Iskraemeco |
Other consortium partners
| City Municipality of Kranj
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City Municipality of Ljubljana
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FEE Norway
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DOVES FEE Slovenia – Eko School
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| Contact representative |
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Future steps of the Green Penguin project
Primarily, the Green Penguin connects schools and educates children about what and how CO2 emissions are created and how we can reduce them. It can also be used to connect other public infrastructure and to motivate everyone to work towards the common goal of reducing carbon footprint. Our goal is to bring this knowledge to other European cities, where more than 85% of Europeans will live by 2050, and where there is also greater potential for cross-sector integration and synergies in digital solutions and data use.
This application for children is the first digital solution of the Green Penguin digital platform, which will be extended to a platform for integrating digital applications for households, industry and businesses, as well as for governments and public institutions. The digital platform, covering and supporting all stakeholders in the urban environment, will allow to capture end-user behavior and share end-user insights with governments, energy and resource sectors to adapt current policies, create new innovations and adapt their operations to end-user demands and needs. This would help residents and businesses control energy consumption and CO2 production to reduce their carbon footprint. In this way, energy and resource consumption will be reduced and, as a result, so will the cost of cities and the amount of emissions. And fewer emissions will help the environment to recover.
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Statements of support
| Luis Goncalves, CEO of Iskraemeco Group |
The Green Penguin project fits with Iskraemeco’s strategy to provide sustainable solutions to our customers. And it also matches the company’s approach to serving the community and supporting the global goals of green and digital transformation. |
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Bahaa Abdullah, CFO of Iskraemeco Group |
We are very happy to have such an innovative project in our company, which fits well with our corporate and sustainability strategy. The project is also very creative, and this is a good thing to educate younger generations about sustainability because they are our future while at the same time we offer solutions for cities to support their decarbonization. |
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| Janez Koželj, Deputy Mayor of Ljubljana |
In Ljubljana, we believe that CO2 reduction is not only about technologies but also about values. It’s about smart people, so we need to involve people to reduce the carbon footprint. The Green Penguin project is exactly what appeals to residents and uses technology. |
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Auður Önnu Magnúsdóttir, NGO Landvernd Iceland |
When people are trying to improve their behavior, it is very important they get feedback on their change quickly. Children are especially quick to adapt. So when you make a change to a climate-smart school environment, as in this project, schools and children can see in real-time how they are contributing to a lower carbon footprint. |
Follow Green Penguin on social media to see what he is up to
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Read the Green Penguin Comic
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