Catalan Platform Formed

Starting in February this year, 8 NGOs from Catalan have formed a platform called ‘Catalonian Agreement for Clean and Renewable Energy’.

The goal is to build a strong coalition of groups and to collect individual signatures of support, in order to put pressure on political decision-makers.

In the first part of the agreement, the groups express their worries about Catalan’s energy dependency on fossil and nuclear fuels; about the decreasing energy efficiency and increasing vulnerability of the present centralised energy system in Catalan; about the energy illiteracy of the population; and about environmental problems of energy production.

In the second part is a proposal to establish a plan and a timetable to phase out, before the year 2010, nuclear power in Catalan, to phase out gradually the thermal power plants based on the most polluting fossil fuels, to increase the energy efficiency of the Catalonian energy system, to ensure that wind energy projects to be developed in Catalan follow sustainability criteria, and to democratise energy decisions.

The third and final part of the document includes a list of commitments of the signatories to the agreement. They will work with all the society sectors (NGOs, political parties, private companies, governments) to open the door to a distributed energy system based on clean and renewable energies, work for the phaseout of nuclear energy, support projects for the increase of energy efficiency, support projects for renewable sources of energy if they are based on sustainability criteria, and work to become examples of sound energy practices in everyday life.

So far, the 8 groups have collected more than 1,000 signatures on the agreement. Among the groups is the INFORSE member organisation Group de Scientcs i Tics per un Futur No Nuclear (Scientists and Technicians Group for a Non Nuclear Future).

Contact: email [email protected], www.energiasostenible.org.