The Highland Council has won a top European Award in recognition of the work it has done to raise awareness amongst staff of energy and water consumption in its buildings and for championing the need to cut CO2 emissions.

The Display® Towards Class A award was presented as part of the Energie-Cités and Climate Alliance conference held in Brussels at the end of April. Energie-Cités is the association of European local authorities whose role is to promote local sustainable energy policy and the importance of local authorities' actions across the whole of Europe in sustainable development by launching and implementing clean energy policies.

The Highland Council convinced the jury with their intensive internal communication campaign, their strong external promotional activities and effective marketing strategy to make staff and the public more aware of the energy performance of their buildings.

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President of the Jury and Mayor of Växjö, Bo Frank said: "The Highland Council stood out from the competition. Their long-term strategy is ambitious and clearly defined with well motivated goals. On a limited budget, the breadth and depth of engagement on the Display Campaign was impressive. The commitment to both infrastructure change through investment and individual behaviour change through partnership working sets a convincing example for other European municipalities to follow."

Chairman of The Highland Council's Climate Change Working Group, Councillor Michael Foxley was delighted that the work of staff in promoting the importance of energy awareness had been internationally recognised.

He said: "This is a tremendous result and good recognition of the combined efforts of everyone involved, especial our Energy and Policy teams.

"The award acknowledges in Highland our efforts and communication activities in relation to energy and carbon management, of which the Display campaign plays an important part."

As well as being presented with a certificate, The Highland Council has won an ecoDriverTM Sustainability Information Management System for a building of its choice. Once installed, this equipment will provider various monitoring tools and alert systems to let people see at a glance the energy performance of their building.

(GK/JM)