News

The fifth Moving for Climate NOW cycling trip, promoted by Iberdrola with the support of the United Nations Climate Change and the COP25, is now under way.

The Moving for Climate NOW team has today started pedalling on electric bicycles in Salamanca, from where they will travel 500 kilometres until arriving on Sunday 1 December in Madrid, where the Summit will begin the next day. There they will deliver their Manifesto to Combat Climate Change, which sets out, point by point, the fundamental principles on which this team considers that action must be taken to face the current climate challenges and meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement.

In addition to the general director of Quality and Environmental Sustainability of the Junta de Castilla y León; Rubén Rodríguez; the councillor for the Environment of the Salamanca City Council, Miryam Rodríguez; the vice-rector of Students of the USAL, Ana Belén Ríos, and the director of Energy Policies and Climate Change of Iberdrola, Carlos Sallé, attended the departure event.

Once again, this initiative is made up of a multidisciplinary cycling team of fifty people from different organisations and countries. Their objective is to raise awareness of the importance of the climate challenge, to unite efforts from all fields and to act with ambition and urgency to halt climate change.

This Manifesto highlights the need to increase climate ambition and move towards scenarios that limit the increase in temperature below 1.5ºC, which is equivalent to achieving zero net emissions by 2050.

To achieve this, they emphasise, fundamentally:

• The urgency of uniting the efforts in all areas, ensuring support measures for the most vulnerable.
• The importance of seeing the fight against climate change as an opportunity to build a sustainable economic model and not as a threat.
• The need to accelerate the energy transition by committing to renewable energy.
• The value of having nature as an ally.
• The importance of mobilising resources to improve climate adaptation.

Moving for Climate NOW is aligned with the United Nations 2030 Agenda Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In particular, this initiative is directly linked to Goal 13 -climate action- and 17 -alliances to achieve the goals-. It also contributes to points 5 -gender equality- and 7 -affordable and non-polluting energy-. The emissions during the trip have been calculated with CeroCO2 and the carbon footprint for the initiative has been compensated by purchasing carbon credits from the UN's Climate Neutral Now and CeroCO2 platforms.

The fifth ‘Moving for Climate NOW’

Moving for Climate NOW is now celebrating its fifth trip, with the cycling team having already travelled more than 3,700 kilometres since the first one, which took them from Bilbao to COP21 in Paris. They then reached the COP22 in Marrakesh from Seville, the COP23 in Bonn from Paris and the COP24 in Katowice (Poland) from Vienna.

During these past five years, Moving for Climate NOW has consisted of representatives from international organisations such as the European Commission, the European Investment Bank, the United Nations Convention for Climate Change (UNFCC), the World Resources Institute (WRI), the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the International Renewable Energy Agency; institutions such as the Spanish Office of Climate Change, the Moroccan Economic, Social and Environmental Council, the Biodiversity Foundation and Seville City Council; initiatives such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) and the Carbon Disclosure Project, as well as civil society through NGOs including ECODES, Red Cross and Action Aid, opinion formers, athletes, research centres and universities such as the Universidad Pontificia Comillas and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.