Roberta Bellini
Our final event, ‘Delivering Solutions for the Sustainability of the Water-Energy Nexus’, took place on 7 March 2023 in Trinity Business School in Dublin. The event run in hybrid mode, with more than 60 attendees in total. Delegates attending in person were welcomed in the foyer of TBS with refreshments and a display of posters describing all the work carried out under the different project areas.
Dublin Welsh Male Choir opening our event.
It was opened by a choral performance of the Dublin Welsh Male Choir, which set a joyful tone. It was followed by words by Professor Brian Broderick, Associate Dean of Research – STEM and by a video contribution of Lee Water MS, Deputy Minister for Climate Change.
It was then the turn of Prof Aonghus Mc Nabola to take participants through some of the achievements and outcomes of the technological solutions. Dr Prysor Williams then presented all that was achieved by the Bangor team in terms of auditing and benchmarking, carbon footprint of distilleries and green technologies for heat recovery and, finally what impacts future climate change could have on water resources availability and hydropower generation in Ireland and Wales. It was followed by a reflection by Prof Paul Coughlan on how as a research team we have managed such a complex and transdisciplinary project and achieved so much! We engaged with over 250 organisations and more than 600 young people and citizens. The winners of our Climate Action Hackathon Programme were invited to join us and present their ideas: Millie and Robert from Newpark Comprehensive Secondary School, with their teacher Ms Grant, came to represent their team and presented their idea ‘Aquatrack’ with a poster and a short but powerful pitch! You can see some of the event salient moments in the gallery below.
The Dublin Welsh Male Choir closed the event with few more songs, from both Irish and Welsh tradition and the two National Anthems.
On behalf of the whole Dwr Uisce Team, we want to thank all who helped us to organise the event, all the delegates and online participants for their interesting questions and messages of appreciation and also the funding by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Ireland Wales Co-operation programme 2014-2020.