Guaranteeing energy security of the EU Member States within the framework of the common electricity market A conference on “Guaranteeing energy security of the EU Member States within the framework of the common electricity market” took place on Friday 30.1.2009 in Ostrava. It was attended by, among others, Czech PM and President of the Council of the EU Mirek Topolánek, members of the Czech, Polish and Swedish governments, and EU Commissioner for Energy Andris Piebalgs.
The Energy Presidency? Energy will indisputably be one of the leitmotifs of the Czech EU Presidency, but much will depend on how the government approaches the issue. It can either feverishly patch up existing “holes” or bring an ambitious plan for modernizing energy in the EU to the table.
Climate change – facts, consequences, risks The concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere are rising rapidly. This rise has been caused by anthropogenic emissions. The absorption of carbon dioxide by terrestrial vegetation and the ocean reduces the amount of CO2 left in the atmosphere by approximately 46%. The absorption spectra and therefore also the greenhouse impact of these molecules are known from basic physical calculations and laboratory experiments. The prevailing positive climate feedbacks strengthen the direct radiation effect and lead to a “climate sensitivity” of 3±1 °C. The global warming is the result of the doubling of pre-industrial carbon dioxide concentration from 280 ppm to 560 ppm. This knowledge is undisputed amongst climate researchers, it is independent from model simulations, and it is based on fundamental physical equations. This is the reason for future considerable warming as a consequence of further greenhouse gas emissions.
New Strategies for Communicating Climate Change I want to talk about the fact that climate change seems to finally have showed up on the public agenda. You know that for a long time this was basically a conversation among us experts and maybe among some elitist politicians or NGOs. However, it seems to have now appeared on the public agenda, and I want to talk more about where the public really is on global warming and, resulting from that, what the needs for communication are at this point. I will discuss how difficult it is to talk about climate change and how well we have done today, what we have achieved and what is left to do, and I will take a pretty critical look at that. Finally, I will share the insights from this project that I have been involved in for the last three or four years on communicating climate change in a way that actually facilitates societal response to this problem -- not just communicating to get the word out, but to actually mobilize the public, which is, I think, the necessity now.
Mitigation costs and strategies - A necessary update! While it is true that I have been also a journalist, I should start by saying that I am not really good at communicating these issues, in particular the economics of climate change to journalists, and I am always getting in trouble with them, for example, when explaining how emissions trading works. Nevertheless, I will do my job here trying to explain the economics of climate change.
Communicating Impacts of Climate Change Because I am here to talk about the Millennium Assessment (MA), I changed the title of my presentation a little bit from “climate” to “environmental”. Climate is, of course, a major part of the environment. If you look at assessments, they are really a booming business, a lot of people are doing them, and they are not science, but communications. Here are some examples: The Dutch Concern for Tomorrow was one of the first in the late 1970s, the UNEP Global Environmental Outlook, the World Water Forum, the Arctic Climate Change Assessment, and the Dutch Sustainability Outlook. The Dutch Sustainability Outlook actually uses the IPCC scenarios, implements them for the Netherlands and then asks policy makers: What is your “business as usual” scenario? Compared to the policy makers, this assessment shows that the majority (i.e. 7050 of the public want a much more sustainable green scenario. That assessment really showed a big mismatch between the public and the ideas of policy makers.
Communicating Climate Science after IPCC The new IPCC Working Group Reports have been published during the first half of 2007. They have been the basis for the Fourth IPCC Assessment Report, which was released at the end of 2007. The three Working Group Reports focuse on the physical base of climate change, the impacts on the ecosystem and human beings as well as adaptation and mitigation strategies and sparked off a wider debate about climate change.
Future of the energy systems The alleged “renaissance of nuclear power” was already on shaky footing before the Fukushima accident. Actually, the number of nuclear power plants is decreasing steadily around the world. During the next 15-20 years, more old installations will go off the grid than new ones will start up. Today, no utility around the world risks building a new nuclear power plant without government subsidies and guarantees.
Road to Copenhagen: The EU and the US – Driving Forces for a Succesful Post 2012 Agreement? The conference organised by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Ministry of Environment provided good opportunity for exchange and debate among the climate diplomats, government officials, experts, business and NGOs representatives and interested public (over 160 participants). The main aim of the conference, the biggest of its kind in the new EU member states this year, was to assess where the EU, USA and other key players stay shortly before the Copenhagen Climate Conference (COP 15) this December. Far beyond that, three thematic workshops in the afternoon provided for an intensive expert discussions on the issues of the cost of the unabated Climate change, ways how to finance the measures against it and last but not least the economic opportunities stemming from the „green investments“ and mitigation measures.