EMPOWER Workshop Cork City - April 2019 - Site Visit and Exchange of Experiences

More Carbon Reduction by Dynamically Monitoring Energy Efficiency. The Southern Regional Assembly in conjunction with Cork City Council hosted a workshop for the EMPOWER project on 27^th March 2019 in Cork City. The workshop was highly participative and provided great insights to the Southern Regional Assembly for the purposes of the EMPOWER project.  A broad range of participants attended including National Policy Makers – The Office of Public Works, the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) and Higher Educational Institutes – Waterford Institute of Technology and Cork Institute of Technology.  Other participants included NCE, Ultan Technologies Ltd and Cork Environmental Forum.

Brian Cassidy, Senior Executive Engineer from Cork City Council provided a presentation on the retrofitting programme for social housing units in Cork City which will be used to pilot the EMPOWER energy efficiency equipment.  We then invited some of our Interregional Project Partners to make presentations to our stakeholders and invited guests.     

Ruby Ganchou (ALEON, the local energy agency in Lorient, France) provided a presentation on The Social Dimension of Energy Monitoring, Users Involvement and Behaviour Changes and Joao Cleto (Local Energy Management Agency of Almada, Portugal) provided a presentation on the HERB project – Holistic Energy Efficient Retrofitting of Social Housing in Almada.

The workshop included a site visit to view first-hand the social housing units being retrofitted by Cork City Council.  It also allowed us to explore how Ireland can affect real behaviour change in energy consumption in social housing and to understand more fully the wider benefits of the retrofitting programme when developing our Regional Action Plan.  

Details about the Cork City Workshop can be found on the Empower project website www.interregeurope.eu/empower.  You are also very welcome to find out more about EMPOWER best practices developed in each partner region in GOOD PRACTICE REGISTER.

EMPOWER is a five-year, inter-regional project which commenced January 2017. The project aims to reduce carbon output by dynamically monitoring energy efficiency in buildings, with a special focus on innovative methods of financing. Consisting of 9-partners: from Ireland, Slovenia, Portugal, Italy, France, Sweden, Poland, Germany and Spain. The project was approved for a grant of €1.90m by the Interreg Europe Programme, through the European Regional Development Fund. 

For more about the EMPOWER project, you can read here www.interregeurope.eu/empower or follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/interregempower and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Empower0/

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Southern Regional Assembly, Waterford, Ireland
Ms. Rose Power, EU Projects Officer, rpower@southernassembly.ie