About the session
Together in electric dreams: tackling climate change
2023 was the hottest year on record - and 2024 is on track to beat it. We are seeing the global impacts of the changing climate. In 2022 we had 40oC temperatures in the UK, in September 2023 we had record temperatures globally – 1.77o above pre-industrial levels, and in April 2024 in India over 900 million people queued to vote in a 47oC heatwave made 45 times more likely by human-induced climate change.
Urgent action is required if we are to have a chance of delivering the goals of the Paris Agreement. Historically the UK has been a leader in climate action, directed by the Climate Change Act 2008, and the UK’s legislated 5 yearly Carbon Budgets. The 2020s were to be the decade of climate action with ambitious emissions reduction commitments set for 2030 in the UK’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) submitted to COP 26 in Glasgow. We are almost halfway through the decade and we have some catching up to do.
Underpinning the decarbonisation of our economy is electrification – involving dramatic changes to our use of energy, decarbonising the electricity system and doubling its current size in the next 25 years.
The lecture will look at the growing impacts of climate change, underlining the need for urgent action. It will examine the implications of electrification for the UK’s path to Net Zero by 2050. Finally, it will touch on the need for adaptation even if we achieve the global goal of the Paris Agreement.
