Renewable energy awareness among future generation of Palestine

This study aims to measure the level of university student's knowledge regarding renewable energy including technical, economical and policy aspects. Thus, a questionnaire is developed and distributed to students from all faculties of An-Najah National University. The results show that there is no significant difference in student's knowledge of renewable energy considering gender, educational level of study, and parental education level. Meanwhile, faculty choice and high school specialization have a strong correlation with the level of knowledge as compared to other demographic variables. In specific, students who come from vocational schools are usually more aware of renewable energy than other university students. In addition to that, this study shows that 45.6% of the students thought that Palestine has high wind potential while more than 40% of the participants believe that Palestine has a very high potential of solar energy. However, only 22.8% of the students think that Palestine is making use of this potential as one of the renewable energy sources. In contrast, 71.3% of the respondents believe that the investment in RE projects is successful, and 70.4% of students confirmed using solar energy for water heating. As a result, student's awareness and knowledge about renewable energy are found limited. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.