City of Lidköping Winner of the ManagEnergy Local Energy Award 2009

The project Energy Gain from the City of Lidköping won first prize at the "ManagEnergy Local Energy Action Award 2009". The top two finalists for the "ManagEnergy Local Energy Action Award 2009" were the Stamp Stanley Walk-to-Millfield Project, Millfield Primary School, North Walsham, UK and The Energy Gain, Lidköping Municipality, Sweden.

The Commissioner for Energy, Andris Piebalgs presented mayor Kjell Hedvall and Environmental strategist Yvonne Träff with the award at the ManagEnergy Annual Conference in Brussels on the 11th of February 2009.
- We have been training 100 local companies in how they can be more energy efficient during this 3-year project period and we are very happy to be awarded with this prize, says environmental strategist Yvonne Träff .

The aim of the project Energy Gain has been to offer SMEs training within the energy- and environmental sector. They have been taught how to become more aware of their energy consumption in order to save money and reduce the green house effect.
- The companies are among many other a contributor to the green house effect. It is important for them to lower their costs. The companies need to be more aware of their energy consumption because when you save energy you also save a lot of money. Often they say that they know that they consume a lot of energy but are not really sure why. It´s important to conduct a survey and see what can be done about it, very often, measures in energy saving doesn´t cost anything but saves money, says Yvonne Träff

Yvonne Träff believes that they have found an interesting and successful way to get the companies eyes opened.
— This could be spread to other countries says Yvonne Träff
The training has been highly praised by the participants. Miljöpunkten, a local network of companies and organisations specialised in environmental issues has been responsible for the training. The Municipality of Lidköping is one of the few municipalities in Sweden that has been able to offer companies training in energy- and environmental issues.

The Energy Gain has been a co-operation between the municipality of Lidköping, the Association of Local Enterprises, the Association of Local Merchants, the Federation of Swedish Farmers. The projected has been made possible by grants from the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency in a project known as "Klimp".