An Isle of Man delegation has returned from visiting the Isle of Wight’s ’Ecoisland’ initiative with a commitment to investigate how viable implementation of a similar initiative would take place in the Isle of Man.
Richard Ronan MHK, the Department’s Political Member with responsibility for energy policy highlighted the importance of the visit:
‘The visit was invaluable in that it enabled the delegation to learn how the Isle of Man can copy many of the initiatives and benefits of ‘Ecoisland’ while acknowledging that we are different to the Isle of Wight in that we are a separate jurisdiction and have ownership of our territorial waters.
‘We will now establish a working party which will develop and progress a business plan once the delegation has had a chance to assimilate the information gathered. The business plan will establish how viable the Isle of Wight’s ‘Ecoisland’ initiative is to implement in the Isle of Man and will be presented later in the Summer to Isle of Man key stakeholders in Government, private sector and non government organisations.’
Ecoisland Partnership CIC had offered an invitation to an Isle of Man delegation to visit the Isle of Wight to see how the Ecoisland GREENprint might be applied to the Isle of Man.
A number of potential initiatives for the Isle of Man were discussed which included freeing up more of the existing MEA generation to sell in to the UK market, utilising abandoned mines to create opportunity for ground source heat pumps; placing a 100MW cable from the Isle of Man to wind farms via a deal with a potential offshore windfarm developer; and creating mini-district heating schemes.
David Green, CEO for Eco-Island commented:
‘We were delighted to meet with the Isle of Man delegation and present the successful Eco-Island initiatives we have developed in the Isle of Wight. We are very excited about future opportunities to work more closely together and build upon this relationship between both Islands to assist in sharing best practice and knowledge.’
