SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE OF RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES IN POLAND - GUIDELINES FOR EDUCATION PROCESS

The basic education in Poland focuses on environmental issues such as garbage segregation, recycling and water saving. The curriculum includes these topics and they are addressed to children and pupils mainly from elementary schools and from lower secondary schools. In Poland, we observed that there is lack of knowledge about pro-ecological behaviours at the higher education level (at the university level), and the curriculums do not include the knowledge about energy saving nor about the creation of energy-saving behaviour. The pro-ecological behaviours should be created during education process and they could focus on the following aspects: knowledge, skills, attitudes, motivation and commitment. In our article, we will present some good examples of non-conventional education project in Poland. Next, we will present the results from our project called ‘Modelling prosumers' behaviour on the energy market’. This research investigates the social acceptance of renewable energy sources (RES) from households’ perspective in Lower Silesia region in Poland. In our research, we identified the correlation between the behaviours of households and their willingness to install RES, and between some features (including attitudinal variables) and pro-ecological behaviours. We identify segments of the energy end-users who have more pro-ecological behaviours. They are mainly people with the secondary and higher technical education. Therefore, we would like to propose them an appropriate educational course at technical universities. Thus, additionally we conducted survey among students of the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology (WUST) and the Wroclaw University (WU) to verify their pro-ecological attitudes and their knowledge of energy conservation. We created the guidelines for education process at university level, which could be useful to create one-semester course. This solution could influence the social acceptance of RES implementation which is especially important in Poland, where energy and ecological awareness is at low level.