Under the National Energy Efficiency Action Plan (NEEAP), Cork County Council has been set an energy efficiency improvement target of 33% on 2009 energy efficiency figures by 2020. To date an improvement of 20.8% has been achieved. Ireland's second National Energy Efficiency Action Plan to 2020 (NEEAP II) gives an exemplar role to Local Authorities which includes local authorities with an energy spend of greater than €5 million to become ISO 50001 Compliant.

ISO 50001-2018 certified. The benefit of certification is having a structured energy management system, promoting awareness among staff and encouraging a culture that champions best practice. The data collated as part of this system can also assist in establishing baseline energy information in the context of this strategy and in developing a system to monitor energy reduction progress.

ISO 50001 is based on the management system model of continual improvement also used for other well-known standards such as ISO 9001 or ISO 14001. In May 2016, Cork County Council became the first Local Authority in Ireland to achieve ISO 50001-2011 certification for its Energy Management System and repeated the feat in 2019 by becoming the first Local Authority to become ISO 50001-2018 certified. The benefit of certification is having a structured energy management system, promoting awareness among staff and encouraging a culture that champions best practice. The data collated as part of this system can also assist in establishing baseline energy information in the context of this strategy and in developing a system to monitor energy reduction progress.

In 2018, public lighting accounted for 54% of energy use within the Local Authority (Fig 2.2). With that in mind Cork County Council is participating in an ambitious national Public Lighting Energy Efficiency Project which aims to retrofit approximately 30,000 lights across Cork County. Once complete this will have a major impact on the Local Authority's overall energy use and assist in achieving energy reduction targets.