MELİSA KUTLUĞ

Greening the Climate, Greening the Local

Abstract

Green Thought Association’s main working fields are ecology, climate change, energy, economy, democracy and media. In the last three years, it has been implementing five different activities/projects/collaborations solely on climate change actions which includes, local visits, local actions, policy making regarding coal power stations, renewable energy and environmental protection.  Also Green Thought Association, has been working on community and local based renewable energy models such as Citizens’ Renewable Energy Power Plant(CPP) and Renewable Energy Cooperatives(REC) since 2015.
Green Thought Association realised a project named Reach for the Sun at Work, aimed to increase youth entrepreneurship in the field of renewable energy, improving their capacity for employment, to increase community knowledge-base regarding renewables through application thus allowing for the increase of their use at local-level, and to support efforts at policy-development in this area.
Now, Green Thought Association and Bornova Municipality realise Greening the Local Greening the Climate Project , as part of the Enhancing Required Joint Efforts on Climate Action Project” which is co-financed by the European Union and the Republic of Turkey. Greening the Local, Greening the Climate Project aims increase capacities citizens, individual entrepreneurs, cooperative initiatives and local governments on climate change, climate adaptation and mitigation and specifically renewable energy production as a method of climate change mitigation, to introduce pilot renewable energy implementations and to promote best practices in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

With this aim there are training programs on climate change, mitigation and adaptation measures for climate change and renewable energies for individuals, entrepreneurs, local government employees, preparation of informative on climate change, mitigation and adaptation and solar power plants.
The action’s objective is to mitigate from climate change, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuel dependent energy production by promoting transition to renewable energy in Turkey starting from local governments, local energy initiatives and individual entrepreneurs. Collaboration with Bornova Municipality will make the project very accurate with its objectives since the municipality, within its organization, will increase its capacity on the issue and it will contribute to their efforts on climate resilient urban planning and renewable energy.

Biography

Melisa Kutluğ graduated from İstanbul Bilgi University, Department of Social Sciences.
In 2014, she becamed volunteer instructor for Ecological Literacy Project of TOG-Yuva. Since 2016 she works in Green Thought Association. She worked as a project assistant in the “Reach for the Sun at Work ” project, which aims to increase youth employment in the field of renewable energy and make good examples for establishing renewable energy cooperatives. Now she works on the project Greening the Local, Greening the Climate which aims strengthen the capacity of citizens, individual entrepreneurs, cooperative enterprises and local governments on climate change, adaptation and mitigation policies and renewable energy.