Connecting individuals and communities to promote sustainability actions
Discover How to Get Connected
Hear Sustainability Stories
Watch a Message From One of Our Connected Communities
Practical Tools
Communities You Can Follow
About Climate Connected
This project is building an easy to use set of tools that support people and communities to take the steps needed to help reduce climate change. There are supports to build a ‘decarbonisation’reducing the amount of Carbon Dioxide emissions committee in the community making plan for the local area to reduce carbon emissions. This also includes supports to help get people in our communities more involved in finding out how what we do in our everyday life that increases or decreases the amount of carbon we emit.
About Climate Connected
This project is building an easy to use set of tools that support people and communities to take the steps needed to help reduce climate change. There are supports to build a ‘decarbonisation’reducing the amount of Carbon Dioxide emissions committee in the community making plan for the local area to reduce carbon emissions. This also includes supports to help get people in our communities more involved in finding out how what we do in our everyday life that increases or decreases the amount of carbon we emit.
Use our Connected Resources
Build a Community Structure
Getting an effective team together is a vital step in the community journey to sustainability. We have broken down the actions and resources needed to do this into five key areas where you can build your capacities and skills.
See Success Stories From People & Communities
Some communities and individuals, just like yours have already made great progress on the journey to sustainability, you can see these stories here. Keep in touch and soon you or your community could have it’s own decarbonisation story to tell
Discover Your Carbon Footprint
Our Carbon Footprint tool is currently in development by Energy Co-operatives Ireland Ltd and Galway University. Please join our mailing list and we will let you know when it is ready to use. In the meantime find out about the sustainability impact of your behaviour choices
Make Valuable Connections
Get more people from your community involved in sustainability. Our dialog tool shows you how to get more people talking to eachother and how you can increase how local people become active in making sustainability happen.
Listen to our Podcast series with advice from sustainability community activists on how you can make a difference in your community
Latest Podcast 5: Resource Centres – a supportive, local ecosystem where your ideas can thrive
James Coyne of Westside Resource Centre and Galway Mayor Councillor Mike Hubbard
In this podcast, Maeve from the Climate Connected series speaks with James Coyne, the CEO of the Galway Westside Resource Centre, about how his community-focused organisation is tackling climate and environmental issues from the ground up.
The Westside Resource Centre is a hub for the community where people can find resources and make connections to help kickstart their sustainability actions – there are resource centres and community hubs throughout Ireland: find yours and start your own action.
Podcast 4
The Local Strengths Approach
Carol Loftus describes the journey of Mulranny from a fading tourist spot to a thriving model of community-driven sustainable development. She outlines how projects emerged, how local people were mobilised.
Listen On…
Podcast 3
Participation and Engagement
Stephanie explains how in her work for Aran Island’s Energy Co-operative, Comharchumann Fuinnimh Oileáin Árainn, she meets co-ops around Europe. She tells us how we can learn from them.
Listen On…
Podcast 2
Co-ops in Europe
Stephanie explains how in her work for Aran Island’s Energy Co-operative, Comharchumann Fuinnimh Oileáin Árainn, she meets co-ops around Europe. She tells us how we can learn from them.
Listen On…
Podcast 1
A strong foundation
There are different types of community organisations. Dara and Avril from Comharchumann Fuinnimh Oileáin Árainn explain why they chose a co-op approach
Listen On…
Our latest Sustainability Success Stories from Communities
Togher Community Garden
This garden has made a habitat for nature so that biodiversity has increased in this space so close to the city of Cork. But at the same time it is clear that Mandie, Marie, and everyone else in the project sees how important it is to include as many people and groups. “It was a challenge at the start to convince people that the garden wasn’t going to be vandalised and that if it was, then we would just fix the issue not highlight it in the community not to be negative about any vandalism. It was important to include the kids and teenagers that hung around the park ask them to help out so they felt involved too.” – Mandie.
The Lixnaw Bog Conservation Project
The Presentation Sisters of the South West Province who owned a 20 acre bog in Lixnaw allowed it to return to nature. They themselves took on the costs of rewilding. At the same time they made sure to talk to the local people who had access to the bog. Long absent species of bog plants and animals were given a chance to return to what became a wetter bog and therefore a healthier bog.
West Kerry Dairy Farmers Sustainable Energy Community
West Kerry Dairy Farmers set up a Sustainable Energy Community (SEC) in 2020 to cut electricity use and carbon emissions in the dairy sector in the area. Led by local farmer Dinny Galvin, supported by a small steering committee, Dingle Hub, and SEAI mentors, the group co-created an Energy Master Plan (EMP) with outside consultants. They went on to run a collective solar PV meitheal . The SEC combined a collective tender for solar, and farmer-to-farmer learning to move farms toward energy efficiency and visible climate action.
Sustainability Stories from Individuals
Jenni has reduced her flights footprint to using ferries and trains
I travel from Inis Mór, an island on the west coast of Ireland to Finland by ferries and trains. I live permanently in Inis Mór but I am originally from Finland. So I visit friends and family in Finland once a year. I plan to travel this way every time in both directions.
We didn’t really need that second car
The benefits are both immediate, sustainable and you send a clear signal of sustainability, environmental consideration and an active lifestyle to your kids. They will then, hopefully, be more likely and more comfortable making these types of decisions into the future – which they will very likely be forced to do anyway in the coming years to mitigate climate change.
Cíara and Keep Cup Campaigns
The impact of my action has been a reduction in my carbon footprint and control on the amount of single-use waste that I produce. For example, if I go out to work 5 days a week for 48 weeks of the year, buy a takeaway coffee, a plastic bottle of water and dispose of them in a public landfill bin each day of my commute, I will have disposed of 240 single use coffee cups and 240 single use plastic water bottles in landfill. By making an effort to carry reusable utensils, that number can be zero!
Dara, installed PV at his home.
In October 2013 we installed 2 kW of Photovoltaic panels (8 panels) ground-mounted at our home. At that time, we also installed a 5kW heat-pump. In September of 2023, we installed a further 2 kW of Photovoltaic panels, making it 4kW in total. The total electricity...
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