Carbon Management Webinars
June-October 2020
Rud Pedersen Public Affairs and IOGP organised a series of four webinars on Carbon Management – a key range of solutions of which CCS, nature-based solutions, clean hydrogen and others are a part of.
1st Webinar – Nature-based solutions
The first webinar, carried out within the framework of the European Commission’s Sustainable Energy Week, focused on nature-based solutions.
The high-level speakers discussed carbon management solutions in agriculture and forestry, their scalability and relevant EU regulatory framework to discuss their role in removing greenhouse gas emissions.
Speakers:
- Artur Runge-Metzger, Director DG Climate Action;
- Ana Frelih-Larsen, Senior Fellow at Ecologic;
- Jutta Paulus, Member of the European Parliament;
- Mika Aho, Director of Public Affairs and Communications at St1.
2nd Webinar – Economic analysis: Can we afford not to bet big on carbon management?
The second discussion took place between top energy economists and a Member of European Parliament on the role of modelling and thorough economic analysis.
Speakers:
- Laszlo Varro, Chief Economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA);
- Maria Spyraki, Member of the European Parliament;
- William Zimmern, Head of Global Macroeconomics at BP.
The speakers looked into how modelling can help guide the distribution of effort between all sectors so as to optimise cost-efficiency as well as the economic feasibility of the transition to carbon neutrality.
3rd Webinar – Carbon Capture and Storage: still tomorrow’s technology?
The 3rd webinar – held on 9 September – focused on what has been preventing the large-scale uptake of CCS and what needs to be done to accelerate the development of this important technology.
Despite calls from the IEA and IPCC on the need to accelerate the development of CCS infrastructure to meet the climate target, the number of projects on the ground is not growing nearly fast enough. The speakers looked into what needs to be done in order to put CCS back on track.
Speakers:
- Maria da Graça Carvalho, Member of the European Parliament;
- Christian Weinberger, Senior Adviser on Advanced Industrial Technologies and Hydrogen at DG GROW;
- Luca Giansanti, Senior Vice President, Head of European Government Affairs at ENI;
- Julio Friedmann, Senior Research Scholar at Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy of Columbia University.
4th Webinar – Delivering climate neutrality: what policy framework will take us there?
The 4th webinar looked at enabling measures that will help the EU achieve this goal, including the EU’s Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), the Sustainable Finance agenda, the follow up policy tools to the Hydrogen and Energy System and TEN-E Regulations, as well as financing instruments like the Innovation Fund and Next Generation EU Fund.
The discussion also addressed the Paris Agreement’s goal to achieve a balance between emissions and removals in the second half of this century and the contribution of international cooperation mechanisms towards this objective, as well as whether the EU’s recently explored carbon border-adjustment mechanism will improve or hinder our chances of reaching the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Speakers:
- Jacob Werksman, Principal Adviser at DG CLIMA, European Commission;
- Pernille Weiss, Member of the European Parliament;
- David Hone, Chief Climate Change Adviser at Shell.
