Good practice:

Clean Technology Centre

Problem addressed
Local authorities manage a number of buildings. There can be different service providers involved in the provision of energy and waste services (water services are all provided by Irish Water) and these bills typically go to the individual buildings or regional head office. Consequently, gathering environmental resource related data for prevention and minimisation purposes is challenging and time consuming. Through the development of an online app that collates all the relevant resource data Cork County Council have streamlined. Through added functionality, benchmarking of performance as well as targeting of improvement areas has been included.

How objectives are reached
The app was initially developed to take energy related data straight from service providers and link it to the appropriate site. This has been very successful and has allowed the different sites to be compared and high users targeted. The app was expanded to include waste and water data. To supplement these, on-site waste and water survey were conducted to provide a deeper understanding of the reasons for the use of water and the generation of wastes. This has allowed specific waste streams to be targeted as well as high water using devices to be identified for retro fit. All of these actions are contributing to the local authority addressing its commitments to the UN SDGs.

Main Stakeholders
Cork County Council, NIMBUS (MTU), the Clean Technology Centre (MTU), the EPA

initial development of the app started with Interreg Funding (€25k). Second phase - national Innovation Public Fund (€30k) to further develop the software, including links to the various energy suppliers. Third phase was €10k from EPA for expansion for waste and water information for local buildings

This project is very much in its infancy but the project team have applied for funding to test drive it with a number of other national actors including:
• Other local authorities
• Government departments
• National agencies
The level of interest in participating reflects the appetite for a single system that can gather, track and monitor resource use across multiple buildings.

Institutional: convincing management in the local authority of the need for this central system was initially challenging. However, with increased demand for resource reporting across multiple buildings its potential was quickly realised.

With the reporting requirements that will come as we near 2030 there will be an increased need to report in a consistent manner at all levels of society. The institutional bodies involved in supporting government (both local and national) will need to lead by example. In terms of time efficiency and consistency of reporting, using a consistent and well researched app based system such as this will allow those using it to track and report on progress in an easy and transparent manner. This is reflected by the interest of a number of different institutional actors in the 4th phase of its development (2021/2022).