Cork City Council is a partner in the innovative INTENSIFY project which champions more carbon reduction through intense community engagement.
The project addresses a key challenge for European cities and regions; how to energise citizens and communities to achieve more carbon reduction. The project recognises the urgency and scale of the challenge, “the targets are so ambitious that they require significant behaviour change that cannot be imposed on people…the will of the people determines the courage of policy-makers…efforts must be intensified.”
At present, the project is now in Semester 5 where the project partners are tasked with organising regional dissemination events. Each partner has identified good practices in other partner regions that may be transferable to their own region. Experts in the good practice are then invited to the host region to share their knowledge and discuss how the good practice could be transferred.
Unfortunately, the outbreak of Covid-19 has resulted in several events either being cancelled or going online. Despite this, project partners are navigating this challenge by maintaining regular contacts with each other and securing consultations with experts in the good practices they are developing.
So far, the project partners have compiled 18 good practices and 8 of these have been successfully published on the Interreg Europe good practices database. Policymakers around Europe can now consult these good practices online. This incudes one submitted by Cork ‘Creating Sustainable Energy Communities’ a programme delivered by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland. This good practice aims to engage communities to change the way they think about energy and enable communities to develop energy management skills and knowledge.
Interreg Europe seeks to establish interregional learning exchange by finding new solutions and finding new inspirations from other regions. INTENSIFY is part-funded by Interreg Europe through the European Regional Development Fund.
Visit INTENSIFY website:
https://www.interregeurope.eu/intensify/
