Cúl Green to cut carbon
A new website to help thousands of Croke Park fans reduce their impact on the environment has been launched by ESB and the GAA. The www.culgreen.ie website, which was unveiled on Thursday, Aug 7th in Croke Park by ESB Chief Executive, Padraig McManus and GAA President, Nickey Brennan, is part of the Cúl Green initiative that aims to make the stadium carbonneutral. Present at the launch was Deidre Newell who has been appointed ESBIe&fm Environmental consultant and is currently based at Croke Park.
Fans and the public can now log onto www.culgreen.ie to access details of how they can support this environmental initiative in making energy saving pledges. Prizes will be made to individual fans pledging on the website, including match tickets. The website gives details of the level of carbon that can be offset through simple everyday tasks.
Website developed by ICT
Croke Park has contracted its
electricity supply from a renewable
source and environmental projects
are ongoing at the stadium.
A grant of €20,000 will be made to the county that makes the most carbon-saving pledges per head of population. This will fund sports equipment for juvenile clubs in the winning county. Further prizes will be made to individual fans who make pledges and ESB has already committed to planting an ash tree for each pledge made.
“The Cúl Green initiative will lead to major energy savings in Croke Park and this can be replicated in homes and clubs throughout the country, said ESB Chief Executive, Padraig McManus.
The website was designed and built by ESBI Computing team within the ICT Software group and has been implemented and is supported by the IT Operations and IS Security teams. Cúl Green project Programme manager Pat Eccles expressed his gratitude to the team “for delivering the initial phase of the website project in such a professional manner & against a challenging project timeline”.
The delivery of the website required the management of many different stakeholders and delivery partners including ESB Corporate Centre, the GAA, ESBIe&fm, C-Red, McConnells and many ICT Group teams.
Project Manager, Adrienne Eacrett said, “The successful delivery of Cúl Green under a very tight timeframe is entirely due to the technical excellence, professionalism and hard work of the delivery teams in ESBI Computing, IT Operations and IS Security, who pulled out all the stops to reach the deadline”.
The core of the website is the pledging system designed to be intuitive, simple to use and expandable. Fans can make a pledge and return later to confirm when they have carried it out.
The website includes secure registration and a comprehensive ‘back-end’ system which allows fans to manage their registration and pledge status up-to-date. The system also automatically emails fans with specific reminders based on their current status.
IT and Telecoms Services Manager, Michael Fox noted that, “The professional appearance and delivery of the Cúl Green website reflected very well on the ICT project team whose design and implementation work is immediately evident, as well as all of those behind the scenes who ensure operational integrity and availability of the Cúl Green website”.
What next
There has already been a
tremendous response with
strong pledging so far.
There are many exciting enhancements proposed or being considered for www.culgreen.ie including the County Challenge, SMS messaging, forums, and more content for children.
The project has a planned life span of five years so there is plenty of scope for the expansion of the website. There is also interest in developing similar sites for other organisations.
