Educating staff, parents and caretakers at a Swedish playschool on energy conservation measures has reduced the school's annual energy consumption by 10 %. This project carried out at the Lagradsgatan playschool shows that education is an effective way of achieving energy savings through simple measures which have a short payback period. Due to the success of this project in the Eskilstuna municipality, advice on energy conservation will be given to all playschools in the area.

Experimental U-values based on measured heat flows through the walls of some houses have been found to be significantly higher than predicted by conventional calculation procedures. The work was carried out in ordinary occupied houses, and included measurements on party, internal and external walls. There are a number of possible reasons for the differences including thermal bridging, high thermal conductivities and excessive air movement in the wall cavities and behind plasterboard dry lining.

This paper describes the analytical results of heating energy consumption monitoring and the determinationof heat protection levels for both single-family and multi-family buildings in Russia. Experiments have been jointly conducted by Russian and American researchers from the Research Institute for Building Physics, Gosstroy of Russia, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The paper describes qualimetric methods which provide a quantitative estimation of thermal and energy performance by using instrumental facilities and non-destructive methods.

Throughout the past decade, a considerable amount of experience has been gained from technology transfer programmes on energy efficiency and renewables energy technologies in the UK. This paper describes theessential elements of a successful technology transfer programme and gives details of some of these elements within the UK Department of Energy's Best Practice programme, its predecessor the Energy Efficiency Demonstration Scheme and the Renewables Energy programme.

The European Community's Thermie programme is outlined, covering financial support for commercial implementation of new energy technologies; measures for energy technology promotion, through a network of Organisations for the promotion of Energy Technology (OPETs), and coordination of technology promotion activities at European level. If future funding is to be secured for Thermie and other technology promotion programmes, their relevance to the key political challenges of the day must be shown.