The NEES Partneship has been awarded Preparatory Project Funding by the Northern Periphery Programme. The purpose of the NEES PPP will be to prepare a comphensive Bid to the NPP Porgramme for a trans-national partnership to promote natural products and processeses aimed at increasing energy efficiency and solar and climatic gain, as well as integrating renewable energy sources into existing homes, in rural and remote regions of the Northern Periphery. The Project will identify key products, processes and retrofit approaches (including design approaches) in order to establish how producers, installers, researchers and users can best benefit, in particularly through co-operation with Universities and research agencies in validating and improving their products. The project is aimed at promoting diversification, skills exchange, local jobs and training in the region, thorugh the development of local SME's and R&D and marketing partnerships. Partners are proposing to present a Bid to the 7th Call in Spring 2011, giving ourselves 6 months to prepare the Bid. We are inviting Expressions of Interest from local authorities, social housing companies and private landlord assosications that might be end users for these technologies into their programmes, as well as associations of growers, producers and installers that wish to develop the partnership. Also, from technical and marketing agecies that have experience in this area, and want to help form a trans-regional network for promotion of this approach. The PP will be co-ordinated by Cork Centre for Architectural Studies based at the University College of Cork, and we are looking for local partnerships in the different regions of the Northern Periphery, which includes South and Western and Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Faroe Islands, and Greenland.

For more information please e-mail José Ospina at jose@joseospina.com or call on (+353) 28 21890.