Climate Change and Energy Experts debate
07 March 2011
Climate Change and Energy Experts have been debating their chosen 2050 Pathways for the last two days. Now it's over to you as the debate opens up to everyone before handing back to the Experts on Wednesday to see whether what they've heard has changed their minds and their 2050 Energy Pathways.
How to get involved
The 2050 Pathways Debate will last a week, starting 3 March 2011. On the first two days our experts debate the merits of the pathways they have presented and you can follow their debate. On 7 March we open the debate to everyone for two days - this will give you the chance to question the experts and share your own preferred pathway as part of the debate. At the end of the week, on 9 March, our experts will respond, possibly amending their own pathways, possibly defending their initial position, certainly responding to many of your questions.
You can follow the whole debate on the new DECC Blog . And after the debate finishes, you can continue to share your thoughts and pathways on the DECC blog until the end of March 2011.
Debate your pathway
Reducing the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% by 2050 is ambitious but achievable. And we face major choices about how best to do this. For example, how far might the UK reduce its demand for energy? How much bioenergy might the UK attempt to source, and where should it be used? How far might the UK attempt to electrify demand for energy? How might we generate the electricity required?
We have invited a panel of experts to propose their own preferred pathways to 2050, to explain why they think their solution is best, and to debate the different choices we could take. You can join this debate, ask the experts questions about their choices and compare their pathways with yours. If you’ve not already created your own pathway you can do so using the 2050 Web tool.
Meet the experts
Our panel of experts has been assembled from many aspects of the debate. You can find out more about each of our experts on the DECC blog - they are:
- Mike Childs, from Friends of the Earth
- Dustin Benton, from CPRE (the Campaign to Protect Rural England)
- Professor Nick Jenkins, from Cardiff University
- Mark Brinkley, author of The Housebuilder’s Bible
- Duncan Rimmer, from National Grid
- David Clarke, from ETI (the Energy Technologies Institute)
- Keith Clarke, from Atkins
- Mark Lynas, author of High Tide: News from a warming world and Six Degrees: Our future on a hotter planet
