Five priority actions to tackle climate change
5th October 2015
The Institution of Chemical Engineer’s (IChemE) Energy Centre has identified five energy policy priorities that will arm decision-makers with effective solutions to tackle climate change.
Ahead of the COP21 climate talks in Paris in December, the IChemE Energy Centre has issued a Climate Communiqué. The communiqué calls upon governments to deliver an effective global agreement that provides clarity, certainty and incentives to allow business, communities and individuals to act.
The Communiqué highlights the areas which the Energy Centre will provide evidenced based recommendations for action in the near future. These are energy efficiency, energy storage and grid management, nuclear power generation, carbon capture storage and utilisation, and sustainable bioenergy.
Antonio Della Pelle, managing director of Enerdata and member of the Energy Centre Board, said: “Chemical engineering is a truly global profession. Climate change is a global issue and it needs a global solution that involves decision-makers, financial institutions and the process industries.
“In the past, decision-makers and industry may have faced conflicting agendas. We need to move on from this and I believe that with the support and ideas of professional chemical engineers, governments stand a better chance of finding workable solutions to the climate change challenge.”
Professor Stefaan Simons, chair of the Energy Centre Board, said: “The failure of previous conferences and summits to deliver anything meaningful on climate change shows that the world urgently needs better and more effective energy policies.
“Rather than merely offering warnings of the danger posed by global warming, we, as chemical engineers, have a unique contribution to make – we not only understand the problem, we can advise decision-makers on how they can solve the problem.”
Professor Simons will represent the Energy Centre at COP21 by participating in a panel discussion on ‘Hitting 2°C means: investing in renewables, a storage revolution, energy efficiency and carbon capture and storage’ on 10 December 2015.
The IChemE Energy Centre Climate Communiqué follows on from the publication of the joint Climate Communiqué, issued by 24 of the UK’s leading institutions, in July 2015.