US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu

Today I went to listen to US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of IPCC at the bright Green Conference Center, both inspiring and interesting to listen to.

Dr. Pachauri was referring to the work of IPCC showing that the world's emissions need to peak before 2015 to meet the 2-degrees target, only 5 year from now, and urged people to start grass root movements to put pressure on politicians and stakeholders.

But I want to focus on the highlights from Steven Chu. His main message was that to achieve our energy and climate goals, we need to:

1. Use and generate energy more efficiently
2. Unlock the full potential of renewables
3. Transform transportation
4. New approaches to nuclear power
5. Carbon Capture and Storage
6. Improve energy storage

His examples of the first category was energy efficient buildings and exploiting the interfaces between sub systems to reduce energy consuption. For task two he used as examples wind power and geothermal energy as heat reservoir. These examples prove to me that Sweco is very well positioned for contributing with sustainable solutions.

He was furthermore saying that:

"The energy and climate problems should capture our imaginations and lift our aspirations. It is the most important challenge that science and technology must solve for ourselves and our porsperity". Then he referred to Martin Luther King, 1967:

"..We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, this is such a thing as being too late."

My hope is therefore that Mr. Chu was giving us a small hint before President Obama's arrival in Copenhagen saying that the intention of the US is not to be too late with the work of a global agreement for emissions reduction; the issue which COP15 is all about..