Transcript Jon Bloomfield - Climate Change Solutions Ltd

Following Paris:What
We
t Can Do Now
Jon Bloomfield. Thursday 28th January 2016. Coventry.
The Paris Agreement
• A positive framework.
• Nowhere near good enough but a vast improvement on
the last event in 2009 at Copenhagen.
• Potential for serious low carbon movement helped by:
• 1.a much wider political consensus
• 2.substantial progress on green energy
• e.g. costs of solar power have fallen 75% in the past
five years; Wind co. Dong Energy investing £6 billion
in the Humber by 2019.
The Paris Agreement
• “A robust, long term agreement will be an opportunity to
usher in an era of growth that will be good for
populations, good for prosperity and good for the planet.”
• Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change – the
organisers of COP21
The Follow-up Approach
• Apply the classic slogan: think global; act local.
• Translate the international to the city-region.
• Avoid passivity: do not just wait for national government
action – or more likely in our case, inaction or bad action.
• Recognise the limitations of small, isolated projects, the
‘silo’ mentality.
Climate KIC. What are we learning?
• Climate Knowledge Innovation Community is the EU’s
largest climate change programme. Midlands region been
involved from the start in 2009. Education,
entrepreneurship and innovation with €80 million budget.
• Key lessons
• the broad model of innovation: the social as well as the
technical.
• All players involved. Not just an elite.
• Needs system change not just new products.
• Stakeholder engagement
• Set out transition pathways and action in bite-sized
chunks.
6
Observations on your action plan
• trying to bring all the players together in a ‘big tent’.
• Looking at key ‘end uses’ is very positive; group into
clusters/topics but eight themes are too many.
• Try to group in three or four and see finance as crosscutting.
• Assess priorities and targets for each theme
• link these closely to funding so you can chart out a
pathway.
How can Climate KIC help?
• 1. host CKIC short courses introducing new thinking on
low carbon transition e.g. two half-day courses a year.
• 2. link in to activities run by others e.g. Warwick
University’s The Journey, when 40 PhD students from
across Europe come to the city.
• 3.Work on urban issues with Birmingham within the
framework of the combined authority. E.g. on mobility;
renovation of buildings; low carbon urban planning;
community energy including retrofit building development
• 4.Learn from good thinking elsewhere in Europe. Can
only make breakthrough by working together.
One Aspect of the Future