‘Empowering Islands to achieve their energy and climate targets’: Scotland and Ireland
As part of a Covenant of Mayors series of events on Climate Adaptation – from SEAPs to SECAPs – this June, SIF was delighted to be invited by DAFNI – the network of Greek sustainable islands – to work with ESIN, the European Small Islands Federation to organise a webinar that would focus on Ireland and Scotland.
The road to becoming a fossil fuel free and climate ready island is not always smooth and easy and there are many obstacles in the way, particularly when island communities are directly involved in setting up renewable energy systems as in Scotland and now Ireland.
The webinar presents successful climate and energy solutions and methodologies in the Scottish and Irish islands, starting with Comhairle nan Eilean Siar – the Western Isles Council, one of the earliest Pact of Islands signatories and continuing with approaches pioneered in Ireland and Orkney.
Presentation of community projects on islands such as the Aran islands in Ireland, Eday in Orkney and Uist in the Hebrides enabled lessons learnt to be shared.
The importance of place based strategy to leverage investment is summed up by the convener of the Scottish Low Carbon Investment Roundtable and the webinar concludes with a presentation by NESOI – the European Islands Facility – on how their approach will support the islands on the road to a Net Zero future.
You can watch the webinar on ESIN’s YouTube channel here.
You can access the presentations from Youtube (links under the video) or from here:
- How islands can support the drive towards Net Zero: John Cunningham (Comhairle nan Eilean Siar)
- Developing Island Local energy communities: Rona MacKay (Community Energy Scotland)
- Supporting Citizens and Communities in the Energy and Climate transition, Paul Kenny (Tipperary Energy Agency)
- The Aran Islands Energy Cooperative, Avril Sharkey (Aran Energy Cooperative)
- Uist Wind: key lessons learnt, triumphing over adversity, Dr Ameena Camps (Uist Wind)
- Setting up the conditions for investment in low carbon communities, Cath Preston (SEPA)
- NESOI, empowering islands, Cristina Boaretto (NESOI)
- Covenant of Mayors 2019 assessment, Yerray Hernandez (COMO)
