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Leigh Turner

Ambassador to Austria and UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other International Organisations in Vienna

Part of UK in Ukraine

2nd March 2012

New ways for teenagers to save energy

Click on the front door and you can enter the house.  Indoors, links lead to practical tips for how people can save energy and, in doing so, save money.  Welcome to the digital eco-house, a project backed by the British Embassy in Kyiv, the singer Alyosha, financially supported by SCM Capital Management and TNK-BP, and implemented by our partner the Do Rechi social marketing bureau.

Anyone who has much contact with teenagers will know they’re all keen on saving energy, particularly their own (joke – Ed).  But research shows that children and young people have immense potential to act as “change agents”, getting everyone, including families, to be more environmentally aware and to be alert to the challenges of global warming.  The eco-house project is therefore aimed specifically at teenagers.  It is backed up with a “teenergy tournament”, an online quiz to be launched on 12 March on www.teenergy.com.ua to test knowledge of energy efficiency measures, with cool prizes including e-books.  You heard it here first.

These initiatives are the latest part of a programme of energy-saving promotions the embassy has been running in Ukraine, starting with our “Save Energy! Save Money! Win Prizes!” Campaign in October 2010.  That produced the Brilliant Energy Saving Photography exhibition in February 2011.  At the press conference to launch the digital eco-house, a journalist asked whether anyone actually planned to build an energy saving house in Ukraine.  All ideas welcome.

About Leigh Turner

I hope you find this blog interesting and, where appropriate, entertaining. My role in Vienna covers the relationship between Austria and the UK as well as the diverse work of…

I hope you find this blog interesting and, where appropriate, entertaining. My role in Vienna covers the relationship between Austria and the UK as well as the diverse work of the UN and other organisations; stories here will reflect that.

About me: I arrived in Vienna in August 2016 for my second posting in this wonderful city, having first served here in the mid-1980s. My previous job was as HM Consul-General and Director-General for Trade and Investment for Turkey, Central Asia and South Caucasus based in Istanbul.

Further back: I grew up in Nigeria, Exeter, Lesotho, Swaziland and Manchester before attending Cambridge University 1976-79. I worked in several government departments before joining the Foreign Office in 1983.

Keen to go to Africa and South America, I’ve had postings in Vienna (twice), Moscow, Bonn, Berlin, Kyiv and Istanbul, plus jobs in London ranging from the EU Budget to the British Overseas Territories.

2002-6 I was lucky enough to spend four years in Berlin running the house, looking after the children (born 1992 and 1994) and doing some writing and journalism.

To return to Vienna as ambassador is a privilege and a pleasure. I hope this blog reflects that.

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campaign energy enery efficiency public diplomacy save energy teenergy

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