Over 1,900 councils all over Europe have signed up to a Covenant of Mayors – a commitment to go beyond the objectives of EU energy policy in terms of reduction of CO2 emissions through enhanced energy efficiency and cleaner energy production and use! However, only one council in Ireland – Dublin City Council – has joined so far.
The EU’s targets are spelt out in the EU Climate Action and Energy Package , which commits Member States to curb their CO2 emissions by at least 20% by 2020.
Signatories of the Covenant of Mayors contribute to these policy objectives through a formal commitment to go beyond this target through the implementation of their Sustainable Energy Action Plan.
Write to your local councillor and tell him/her that the council needs to sign up to this EU initiative! And send another letter/email to Minister John Gormley at [email protected]. Then encourage your family, friends, colleagues and neighbours to do the same!
See http://www.environ.ie/en/LocalGovernment/LocalGovernmentAdministration/L for local council links.
Go on! Let’s make our emerald isle an actual green country!
Of the 109 local authorities in Ireland, only ONE, Dublin City, is signed up to this. Yet 1907 towns and cities are signed up all over Europe. And when we consider the populations of some of the countries that have more signatories than us (e.g. Malta, with a population of 450,000 and 30 committed towns!), this puts us in the bottom three of all countries in Europe 🙁
So much for Ireland leading the way to mitigate Climate Change… How can we change to a Green Economy if we can’t even get our towns to commit to a Sustainable Energy Action Plan?!
See www.eumayors.eu for further information.
