News from EKOenergy

In 2019, our seventh year of activities, we continued to stress the importance of immediate and concrete climate action. We spent 100% of our time, energy and budget on promoting a 100% renewable and sustainable world.

In our Annual Report 2019 we list our main activities and achievements.

We want to thank everybody who helped us achieve so much in 2019. We weren’t able to list all partners, licensees and EKOenergy consumers in our Annual Report, but we appreciate all your support! EKOenergy thrives on the enthusiasm of many.

Thanks!

For the new year, we wish you all the best and, above all, good health!

But this isn't just the start of a new year, this is a start of a crucial decade. Either we drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, by 5 - 7% per year, or we are headed towards 2 degrees of global warming, i.e. climate chaos.

We are ready for the most ambitious scenario. We hope we can continue to strengthen existing partnerships, and start many new cooperations. The challenges in the energy sector are huge, for consumers as well as producers and sellers. But cooperation and involvement can make the work much nicer and easier!

"2020 brings a new decade and it’s an interesting time for me, personally. What I’ve learnt is that I want to forge a future in environmentally sustainability and to do my small part of protecting the beautiful planet that we inhabit."

Interview with Tom Hall, EKOenergy's 50th long term European Solidarity Corps volunteer.

Last year, our #PassionForGreenFashion campaign focused on the use of renewable energy in the fashion sector. We also encouraged companies to take an extra step, e.g. by switching to EKOenergy-labelled electricity.

We are happy to welcome Vesica Piscis footwear to the growing group of EKOenergy consumers. Their vegan shoes and accessories are handcrafted with local and recycled materials. They now proudly show our logo on their website too.

Through our Environmental Fund, we finance river restoration projects. It’s one of the ways consumers of EKOenergy-labelled hydropower make a positive difference.

We financed the first projects in 2015 and since then, we have financed 21 projects with a total sum of 398,200 €. You can see all of these projects on our new Environmental Fund projects map.

So far, most of the projects are in Finland, where most of the EKOenergy-labelled hydropower is sold. We are looking forward to supporting nature and river ecosystems in many other countries too! Interested in joining our efforts? Contact us for more information.

"The support of EKOenergy's Environmental Fund was very important for the restoration activities in the Kovesjoki, Taipaleenjoki and Kooninjoki rivers. Without the support from EKOenergy we wouldn't have been able to get so much work done."

Heikki Holsti, KVVY, in the final report of the "Free waterways" project, co-financed by EKOenergy's Environmental Fund.

Our non-profit ecolabel is expanding its scope towards heat (and cooling). Last month, we published the proposal for EKOenergy's criteria for renewable heat and cooling.

The public consultation about the proposal will stay open until 31st January 2020.

During this process, we are only focusing on geothermal heat, solar thermal energy, heat from heat recuperation, and heat generated with heat pumps. Early next year, we will start another process to update EKOenergy’s criteria for bioenergy. In combination with that second process, the criteria for heat may be extended to cover specific types of bioenergy-based heat too.

Are you already following EKOenergy on  LinkedIn? You are more than welcome!

We regularly post updates about our own activities, about renewable energy in general and about climate change.

The page is a good complement to our newsletter and it is an interesting source of information for professionals from the renewable energy sector as well as for anybody else interested in climate and energy.

And as with all social media: remember to like the updates if you want to see similar posts in your feed.

"Thanks to the electricity, there are now more opportunities for income generation.”

Chandra B. Thokar, User Committee Group in a video about one of our newest Climate Fund projects in Nepal.

Australia today is ground zero for the climate catastrophe. Its glorious Great Barrier Reef is dying, its world-heritage rain forests are burning, its giant kelp forests have largely vanished, numerous towns have run out of water or are about to, and now the vast continent is burning on a scale never before seen.

And yet, incredibly, the response of Australia’s leaders to this unprecedented national crisis has been not to defend their country but to defend the fossil fuel industry.

Wonder why? Fossil fuel and energy companies are some of the largest donors in the country; flush with profits from repeated commodity and investment booms, as a sector they rival the big banks as the most dominant industry in political donations.

First 2 paragraphs copied from "Australia is committing climate suicide" by Richard Flanagan, The New York Times and last paragraph from "Climate denialism is bought and paid for by a rotten political system", by Bernard Keane, Crikey.