A brief description of FIRE activities

FIRE (Italian Federation for Rational use of Energy) is a non-profit organization established in 1988 to promote energy efficiency. Its founder members were ENEA - Italian Agency for New technologies, Energy and the Environment - and other relevant organizations, which were active in the field of rational use of energy.

The primary goal of FIRE is to promote energy efficiency, mainly through the provision of operational, technical and scientific support to its members and to energy managers. FIRE aims to:

• promote and activate an "energy culture" through the diffusion of information, knowledge and best practices about the rational use of energy among policy makers, energy managers, public officers, market operators, and end-users;
• carry out studies, researches, surveys and analyses to identify the needs and the cost effective options for energy efficiency improvement;
• stimulate the energy market to increase energy efficiency practices and disseminate the best available energy techniques;
• contribute to the identification of new techniques for energy saving;
• stimulate international collaboration involving foreign associations operating in the energy and environment sectors.

To accomplish these tasks FIRE organizes workshops, training courses, working groups on specific topics (e.g. cogeneration, energy supply contracts, buildings, power quality, etc), and cooperates with the istitutional public bodies involved in the energy sector and with association and research centers.

FIRE is mainly financed through its members (local authorities, energy managers, end-users, consultants, companies operating in the energy sector, universities, etc), which presently are more than 500, to whom the Federation offers many services in order to keep them up-to-date about the energy market and the energy legislation.

Besides the above mentioned activities, since 1992 there has been an Implementing Agreement with the Ministry of Economic Development, which has transferred to FIRE its own support activities for the implementation of Article 19 of Law 10/1991 about the compulsory appointment of energy managers in large private and public companies.
In the year 2005 about 2.650 energy managers were appointed as prescribed by the above mentioned law. For further information about the Italian energy manager network there is the report, created inside the AID-EE SAVE project, Evaluation of the energy manager programme (Italy).
Since the beginning FIRE established a network with these people, which works through direct contact, dissemination events, the magazine "Gestione Energia" and this web-site.

FIRE has also been involved in many projects among European countries and has been the Italian agent for the GreenLight Project. Furthermore, in the past FIRE has been also involved in other European Projects listed below:

• measures associated to the THERMIE Programme (OPET Contract N. 4.1000-91-12);
• programme for strenghtening the role of the energy manager in public administration and service sector, following the indications of Italian Law 10/91, co-funded by the SAVE Programme (Project N. SA/3/94/IT);
• energy efficiency in Italian hospitals (THERMIE-B Action N. STR/0946/96/IT);
• PHETRA - Promotion of innovation of heat transfer technics in the sector of air-conditioning, in collaboration with CEA, Grenoble, France, co-financed by E.C. D.G. XIII (Contract RSE 072)
• capacity building of Slovenian local authorities for energy planning, co-funded by Phare Partnership Programme of the EU (Project N. 96PP/IT/19) ;
• transfer of successful THERMIE technologies to SMEs: a pilot case in the building sector (THERMIE-B Action N. SME/1223/97/FR);
• transfer of successful building retrofitting technologies (THERMIE-B Action N. SME/1422/97/DE);
• plan for the development of cogeneration in Slovenia (co-funded by the Italian Ministry for Foreign Trader).

If you wish to receive further information please feel free to contact us: faq@fire-italia.it