Vortrag im Rahmen des University of Vienna Physics Colloquiums
It is soon 10 years since the Paris Agreement has been signed and ratified by over 190 countries. Since then, the media and the scientific/professional literature has been loud by two, seemingly controversial trends. First, we are very far from what would need to happen to fulfil the goals of the Paris Agreement. Second, as the IPCC has also demonstrated, the techological progress related to the energy transition have exceeded most expectations and projections. Solar energy is the cheapest in the vast majority of the world, last year 92.5% of all power related investments were in renewable energy, and last year just wind and solar produced more power in the EU, first time in our history, than fossil fuels. So how can these two trends be reconciled? If we are so successful in the green energy transition, why aren’t we bending the emissions curve and are closing in more towards the Paris Agreement goals?
The lecture will present evidence for both of these trends, and argue that as long as our hunger for energy and materials keeps increasing more than we are able to scale up green energy and materials, meeting climate and other environmental goals will remain either very challenging or potentially even impossible. The lecture will highlight different scientific discourses for elements of the solution to overcome these, as well as a few examples where we managed to substantially reduce energy and material demand while advancing well-being significantly.
A light lunch buffet will be offered before the lecture at around 13:00.
