The President of the Cabildo, Rosa Dávila, highlights ITER’s commitment with sustainability and renewable energies through its projects.
The Cabildo of Tenerife has organized, together with the Cabildo of Gran Canaria, the Covenant of Mayors Office and the Canary Islands Federation of Municipalities, the National Meeting of the Covenant of Mayors 2024, which took place on January 30 and 31 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Tenerife, respectively, and focused on adaptation to climate change, citizen participation, tourism sustainability, energy poverty and energy communities.
The Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Sustainable Energy is a program of the European Commission considered as the world’s largest urban initiative on climate and energy, brings together thousands of local and regional authorities with a voluntary commitment to implement in their territories the climate and energy objectives of the European Union.
Today’s event (Wednesday 31) took place at the ITER facilities and was attended by the president of the Cabildo of Tenerife, Rosa Dávila; the insular director of Natural Environment, Pedro Millán; the insular director of Waste, Alejandro Molowny, and the CEO of ITER, Begoña Ortiz, as well as the mayors and councillors of the municipalities members of the pact.
Rosa Dávila, who was in charge of inaugurating the conference, indicated that “the Covenant of Mayors is a fundamental tool for the involvement of the peoples of Europe in energy sustainability and its consequences on the climate that future generations of the planet will experience. The urgency of addressing the ravages of climate change with real – and realistic – solutions becomes evident every day. And in Tenerife we have an entity such as ITER, which is a research centre of international reference in renewable energies, engineering, telecommunications and environment that represents the Cabildo’s firm commitment to climate action, the protection of the natural environment and the energy transition towards renewable energies”.
The sessions in Tenerife focused, among others, on adaptation to climate change, energy poverty and citizen participation in local climate actions. In addition to hosting the event, ITER participated in the event in the framework of the Genera project, co-funded by the LIFE program, in which it participates as a partner and whose objective is to assist municipalities in the implementation of energy transition agendas as set out in the European Clean Energy Initiative Agendas for European islands and the Covenant of Mayors.
Today’s day began with a first block called ‘Adaptation to climate change’, after which the project ‘LIFE-Genera, Energy Transition in Municipalities’ was presented. The second block analyzed ‘Citizen participation: how to involve citizens in local climate actions’, while the third was dedicated to ‘Tourism Sustainability’. Finally, the fourth block dealt with ‘Energy poverty evaluation and monitoring systems’.
The day ended with a guided visit to the ITER facilities where the attendees could learn about the main areas and research projects of ITER.
In the sessions held yesterday (Tuesday 30th) in Gran Canaria, the new features of the Covenant of Mayors for the new year were addressed and a tour of success stories and the problems arising from the mitigation and adaptation measures to climate change in different municipalities was carried out.