Interest Group:
Brick Manufacturers & Members
The Energy Efficient Clay Brick (EECB) Project is proud to announce today that it has been named the winner of the National Energy Globe Award South Africa in the 2016 Energy Globe Awards. The Energy Globe Award is considered the most prestigious environmental prize worldwide with the aim of raising global attention to sustainable projects whose environmental solutions can be applied anywhere in the world and will motivate others to engage and become active in the area.
The EECB project has continued to excel since its inception in 2013, showing fantastic prowess in addressing energy consumption within the clay brick sector. “It’s fantastic that we as the EECB Project have been given this recognition by the Energy Globe Foundation which has international exposure and outreach. I am immensely proud of our project team and thank them, as well as Swisscontact as the implementing agency and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation as our funders for their support, as well as our partners who have enabled us to implement EECB successfully within the South African clay brick sector.” said John Volsteedt, EECB Project Manager. The EECB project team was honoured at the awards ceremony in Johannesburg, on 22nd of June 2016, where they received a certificate presented by her Excellency Brigitte Öppinger-Walchshofer, Austrian Ambassador to South Africa, and Mr Thomas Spazier, Deputy Trade Commissioner at Advantage Austria. A full list of the National Energy Globe Award Winners can be found at www.energyglobe.info.
The EECB project is a Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation funded and Swisscontact implemented project which aims to ensure environmental sustainability by seeking economic solutions to increased energy efficiency and lower greenhouse gas emissions in the clay brick sector in South Africa. The project represents the second phase of the Vertical Shaft Brick Kiln Project with a focus on mitigating climate change in the South African clay brick sector of through the inclusion of the entire market system to foster green and sustainable transformation in the sector by reducing air emissions and improving energy efficiency.
The Energy Globe Awards were founded in 2000 Wolfgang Neumann, an Austrian engineer and environmentalist with a passion for sustainability. He established the awards to recognise projects that make a huge impact on their communities by providing future oriented solutions to sustainability and energy consumption in the hopes that countries and communities with similar problems would be able to replicate these projects ant tackle the challenges head on. The winning projects are selected regionally, nationally and globally and are considered as dedicated visionaries working to address sustainable lifestyles. The awards are a UNESCO supported initiative working in cooperation with UNEP.
The EECB project team are honoured to have received recognition from such a prestigious institution and for the opportunity for the project’s activities and efforts to be promoted on a global scale.