“You are the ones who guide our innovation.” With these words, Enel’s CEO Fulvio Conti addressed an audience of more than 300 middle and high school students from twelve countries in Europe, North America and Latin America, who had convened in Enel’s Auditorium in Rome on May 30, to participate in the closing ceremony of the PlayEnergy contest. This last event of the project was a worthy conclusion for a passionate year that got more than 460 thousand students involved from 83 thousand schools in Italy and abroad; with as many as 125 thousand young boys and girls taking part in the final stage of the contest, with 2,830 projects.
To celebrate the young protagonists of Enel’s initiative – which has reached its eighth edition and acquired an expanding global dimension – two exceptional guests got on the Auditorium’s stage: Victoria Cabello, patroness and presenter of the event, and Jovanotti, whose “Io penso positivo” (“I think positive”) hit won him a standing ovation from the audience.
A CONSCIENTIOUS AND CREATIVE GENERATION
Enel’s CEO reminded the young boys and girls from Italy, Russia, Bulgaria, Guatemala, and the United States – to name only some of the countries affected by PlayEnergy – that “the world needs to imagine its future,” and that, with regard to this need, young generations’ responsibilities are crucial, because “today’s youth will be tomorrow’s conscientious citizens.” The competing projects showed that the trust in young people is more than justified, because they have become quite familiar with energy, technology, and environmental issues. Even Jovanotti noted that young people have a different outlook on topics such as energy conservation and environmental responsibility, adding that his 12 year old daughter “often shows us, adults, what to do in order to protect the environment,” since she has already learned at school what is needed in order to achieve, in everyday life, what is known as sustainability at the adult level.
The theme of the PlayEnergy 2010-2011 contest was “Sulle Tracce dell’Energia” (On Energy’s Trail) – a cue provided to the young, in order to exercise their creative abilities. And not only: more than 100 thousand students engaged in the research of energy realities in other countries, in order to discover the most used sources, the most innovative and efficient technologies, and propose projects of communication, information and even practical solutions, such as “Spatial Planning and Emission Reduction,” a paper prepared by the students of the A. Meucci School of Science and Technology, Massa Carrara, Italy, winners of the fourth edition of the Master PlayEnergy.
A CARBON NEUTRAL EVENT
For Jovanotti, initiatives such as PlayEnergy “reflect the needs of our times,” because “we are now living in world 2.0, where nobody can ignore his fellow man,” and environmental responsibility increases in value. The singer invited the audience to maintain and spread awareness about energy issues, while, at the same time, make choices that show their intention to take environmental responsibility seriously. The PlayEnergy event itself served, after all, as an occasion to prove the point. The carbon dioxide emissions produced by the closing ceremony will be offset with the planting of 450 fruit trees in Cameroon, one per each prizewinning student.
From Enel Together
Issue 5 | Year VIII. June 2011
