Piteå is a municipality situated on the Gulf of Bothnia, 900 km north of Stockholm and 100 km south of the Arctic Circle. With 41,000 residents it makes a significant contribution to the 260,000 population of the County of Norrbotten. Piteå focuses on energy and sustainable development and offers good development opportunities for people and companies. In recent years, Piteå has broadened its industry by supplementing its important basic industry with an infrastructure for a growing service sector. Right now, there is strong growth in the renewable energy field where many years of research is now attracting national and international attention. Research into renewable energy with forest as the raw material has been carried out in Piteå for a long time. There is now strong expansion of energy technology development in Solander Science Park/Piteå sciens park, the common platform for Piteå’s business environment, in which most of the development activity in the energy field is located. Piteå has also been shown to have extremely good wind conditions, and it has been decided that more than a thousand wind turbines will be set up there. The Swedish Energy Agency has also appointed the Municipality of Piteå as a participant in the project “Sustainable Municipality”, an assignment in which the municipality will oversee all the activities with the aim of making more environmentally friendly choices and investments.
The activities of the schools in the municipality of Piteå are based on vision, strategic areas, goals and goal indicators and the Municipal Council uses the operational plan and other control documents such as interim and annual reports for control and follow-ups within this structure, where the focus area is  “Sustainable Municipality”, The education office runs preschool and school activities that are available to all children and young people and it is responsible for the education of approx. 8000 children and pupils. Quality in the schools is a prioritized issue in the municipality and for the last years Piteå has been appointed as “Best five school municipality of the year” in Sweden. The education department has its own research unit and a strong cooperation with Luleå University of Technology (LTU). LTUs main campus is situated in Luleå about 50 km northeast of Piteå.  There is also a LTU campus in Piteå which focus on music and media.
Strömbackaskolan is a municipal upper secondary school in the center of Piteå with a total of approx. 1400 pupils and 200 staff. Strömbackaskolan offers 14 national programs, the individual program and a specially designed program specializing in classical ballet. The school profiles itself by investing in international experience exchanges. The idea is that as many of Strömbackskolan’s pupils as possible should have the chance to travel in Europe once during their time at upper secondary school, for in-depth study or on an exchange with a school in another country. The aim is to increase knowledge and understanding of other countries’ ways of life, culture and history, and about study conditions for young people in other countries. Another important part is to stimulate pupils to further develop their language skills. The school were appointed to the school year 2013 municipality for municipal investment in resources to school, competence in teachers, high proportion of students who complete their training and who achieve basic qualifications to University and College. The school is a certified Technology College School and is part of the region for health and social care college as one of six schools. Currently targeting our development against the implementation of the project 1-1, a computer per student as of the autumn of 2014. As the Municipality focus on Sustainable Municipality, the school focus on the same.
Two teachers are responsible for the project and they educate two parallel classes in two grades, in all 150 students. The participating teachers teach science and geography/social studies and they are including moments of climate and environmental impact as a natural part of teaching. The students have for many years been working on an exploratory way on these issues, often cross-curricular. The students also have a good ability to express themselves in the English language and are quite used to talk in front of other people.