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SEC Information Session for Elected Members

30th April, 2021

We were delighted to host an information session about the Sustainable Energy Communities (SEC) programme recently, where over 50 elected members from Dublin City, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal, South Dublin, Wicklow, Kildare and Meath joined us to learn more about the programme and the many benefits it can bring to local areas.

This session also looked at the important role that local authorities and elected members can play in the SEC programme, with Caroline Corrigan from Meath County Council giving an overview of how the council was supporting the initiative.

We also heard from Megan Kuster of Ringsend-Irishtown SEC about the great work that the community has done so far and further projects that they will be working on in 2021 through the Better Energy Communities fund.

About the SEC Programme

The Sustainable Energy Communities (SEC) initiative is a funding and support programme, which helps communities to work together to become energy-smart and more sustainable. 

The programme is run nationally by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) and Codema is the coordinator for the Dublin and Mid-East region. There are now over 550 SECs up and running in Ireland, with over a quarter of these based in the Dublin and Mid-East Region.

SECs are provided with a county mentor to guide them through the three stages of the programme, ‘Learn’, ‘Plan’ and ‘Do’. At the 'Plan' stage, SECs can apply for funding to carry out an energy master plan for their community.

To help with this stage, Codema set up a partnership with all the local authorities in Dublin, Kildare, Meath and Wicklow, who can act as the lead applicant when a SEC is applying for their energy master plan funding. This helps to reduce any financial and administrative burden to the SEC, but not all SECs will follow this route with their Local Authority as lead applicant.

You can view the session by watching the video below.

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