Horizons

GREEN CHALLENGERS: Students and young workers will be crucial in creating a smarter, greener economy, according to the British Council, which hosted a Green Dragons' Den event in Dublin last week, featuring ideas from 30 entrepreneurs from across Europe.

Among the projects discussed were Urban Bloom, which would see green roofs installed on city buildings; Light Brigade, an online campaign to reduce energy wastage in offices and shops; and Swapping is the New Shopping, a scheme for a user-friendly online marketplace (an idea already tried out in some cities, including Dublin). The Challenge Europe advocates also visited the eco-village in Cloughjordan, Co Tipperary. Challenge Europe is the European element of the British Council’s global climate programme.

WARMING UP FOR COPENHAGEN

Former Irish president and human rights campaigner Mary Robinson (left) will speak at an ecumenical prayer service at 5.45pm on Friday in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, an event organised by Stop Climate Chaos, the coalition of non-governmental environmental groups.

Meanwhile, Backstreet Boys will play in Copenhagen on Tuesday at the final concert of the European Commission’s Play to Stop: Europe for Climate campaign.

“It will be our level of knowledge, our daily actions, choices and outspoken demands on products, companies and politicians that will determine the temperature,” said European Commission vice-president Margot Wallström.

BLESSED BY WIND AND WAVE

With some of the best wind and wave resources in the world, Ireland is ideally placed for the development of green and clean technology, according to Barry O’Leary, chief executive of IDA Ireland.

“Onshore wind turbines could account for 35 per cent of our energy needs and Ireland has the highest wave energy resource in Europe,” O’Leary writes in the current issue of Heritage Outlook, the Heritage Council magazine. In the article, he cites local and international businesses that are currently developing and testing wave energy prototypes, suggesting that, in the long term, Ireland could become a net exporter of green energy.

See heritagecouncil.ie for more details.

350.org

Set up by environmental author Bill McKibbon, this site has lots of lively photographs from events around the world held to highlight climate change. Its name refers to the target of 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere that is considered a safe upper limit to avoid a climate tipping point. Candlelit vigils are planned for next weekend to coincide with the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen.