LUCSUS and the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies are organising two seminars to highlight recent debates in climate policy and the leadership role that academic institutions can play.
Welcome to the two seminars with Kevin Anderson
The poster for the first event is attached here, please feel free to distribute!
10 April 13-15h, Wrangel Library (Biskopsgatan 5)
The carbon guilt of the sustainability scientist – should academics stop flying?
Academics are amongst those with the highest awareness about climate change and the urgent actions that are needed to prevent its worst impacts. At the same time this privileged group consists of individuals with some of the highest carbon footprints in the world, not least because of the increasing demand for internationalization in academia and the large amount of international air travel that this involves. How can individual researchers and academic institutions face up to this contradiction? Kevin Anderson gives a presentation on the urgent need for more climate leadership in academia, followed by a moderated discussion with the audience.
11 April 9-12h, Pufendorf Institute (Biskopsgatan 3)
Bioenergy with Carbon Capture & Storage (BECCS): serious suggestion or expedient delusion?
To achieve the climate change mitigation objectives agreed at the COP21 in Paris, most future emission scenarios assume the large-scale deployment of still-unproven and poorly understood technologies for removing CO2 from the atmosphere. One of the most likely candidates for bringing about these ‘negative emissions’ is BECCS, or Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage, which promises to convert large amounts of bioenergy crops into combustible fuels, utilize them for energy generation, capture the released CO2 and permanently store it underground. Policy makers are largely unaware of the assumptions that current models are built on, or of the social consequences that the deployment of BECCS, at the scale needed, would entail. This presentation gives an overview of some main trends in the development of BECCS and highlights current and future concerns.
About Kevin Anderson
Kevin Anderson holds the Zennström professorship in Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University (hosted at the Centre for Sustainable Development - CEMUS) and the chair of energy and climate change at the School of Mechanical, Aeronautical and Civil Engineering (MACE) at the University of Manchester. He is deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and a non-executive director of Greenstone Carbon Management. Kevin is research active with recent publications in Science, Nature and Nature Geosciences.
Kevin engages widely across all tiers of government (UK and Sweden) on issues ranging from shale gas, aviation and shipping to the role of climate modeling (IAMs), carbon budgets and ‘negative emission technologies’. His analysis previously contributed to the framing of the UK’s Climate Change Act and the development of national carbon budgets.
Kevin has a decade’s industrial experience, principally in the petrochemical industry. He is a chartered engineer and a fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.