When she qualified as an architect, Challenge Europe advocate Irene McGee would never have guessed that her career would involve lobbying for and securing a stake in the UK’s multimillion-pound scheme to develop electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure in various cities across the UK.

The climate advocate, originally from County Donegal in Ireland, has instigated and led Northern Ireland’s ‘Plugged in Places’ bid over the past year to install charging points for electric vehicles in 6 towns and cities across Northern Ireland, a project that involves a Consortium of government departments, various utilities, NGOs, political parties and businesses.

Irene became involved in this initiative as a result of the British Council’s Challenge Europe programme, a three year campaign that aspires to make a definite and lasting impact on the climate change debate. Back in 2008-09, Irene, formed the Challenge Europe project group ‘Project Better Place’ with two other advocates from NI/Ireland. Their main aim was to encourage the shift to electric vehicles in Ireland and Northern Ireland and to ensure that any infrastructure adopted would work on both sides of the border. Initially, the group focused on battery-swapping technology but switched to the plugged-in approach in response to policies already adopted by Ireland.

‘We changed our focus to ensuring that whatever infrastructure was chosen in Northern Ireland in the future, it maintained compatibility with Ireland. We carried out scoping studies and held stakeholder events North/South in order to attract support for the scheme. We developed electric vehicle policy recommendations and arranged presentations and information days between representatives in Northern Ireland and Ireland in order to ensure collaboration and compatibility,’ Irene said.

Challenge Europe expanded Irene’s knowledge of sustainability and gave her greater confidence to talk about climate change and low carbon issues, particularly in relation to EV infrastructure. It put her in touch with other advocates and leading members of the community, from government ministers to business leaders and philosophers. Much more than that though, it set her career off in a completely different direction which saw her becoming the driving force behind NI’s ‘Plugged in Places’ EV submission to the UK Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) and a key player in securing a combined funding commitment of over £2 million from OLEV and the NI Consortium to support the installation of electric vehicle charging infrastructure in NI.

This is a remarkable achievement whose origins can proudly be attributed to one of the British Council’s climate projects. In fact, Irene herself admits that it may never have happened if she hadn’t been involved in Challenge Europe. ‘I firmly believe we wouldn't even have been discussing ‘Plugged in Places’ with public and private sector in NI if it weren't because of the springboard we had from Challenge Europe and the British Council. It goes to show how important projects such as Challenge Europe are in creating new things and giving young people the confidence to move things forward’.