Catch up on Community Energy - October 2020

After years of campaigning on Community Energy, things are now looking bright! Last month Eirgrid held the first ever Irish renewable electricity auction, which gave the go ahead to 82 wind and solar parks, including two community owned solar parks from our partners at Community Power.

Community Power is Irelands first every 100% renewable and community owned electricity provider. You can switch your home or work electricity provider to Community Energy and know that you are supporting the change with clean, green and sound energy. 

Our Solar Schools project demonstrates how schools can be a part of Ireland’s clean energy transition but also highlights the obstacles to getting there. We’ve been calling on the government to change the rules, and they have listened! For years, schools and communities have been faced with additional burdens like planning permission when they want to go solar. Now, they can install as many solar panels as they need.

To top that off, it looks as though Ireland will soon have a feed-in tariff, which means that if you have solar on your house will receive a fair payment for any excess energy you generate. Happy sunny days ahead!

I've been giving workshops to our winning schools and it’s been lovely to connect with these bright and talented students again. As part of the competition, each school had to think up a climate action project and make a video to share their plans. We wanted to show you this brilliant video from St Paul's CBS in Dublin about their D7 Unplugged idea.

On October 22nd they'll be 'uplugging' for the day to raise awareness of the climate polluting fossil fuels that are burnt every day to power all our stuff. Their catchy rap explaining the idea is well worth a listen. And of course, when their solar panels are installed they'll be powered from the sun. Check out their video below!