Event reports
Speakers were Tim Yeo MP, Chairman of the Energy and climate Change Committee in the UK Parliament, Professor Dr Keun-Wook Paik, Associate Fellow of Energy, Environment and resources Department at Chatham House and Dr Frank Umbach, Research Director of EUCERS. The discussion was chaired by Professor Dr Friedbert Pflüger, Director of EUCERS.
“China is too big to ignore” was the consensus of the debate. The Middle Kingdom is the country with the highest energy consumption in the world and it will rise corresponding to their economic growth.
Moreover the Chinese society is not sensitized for climate change, they are more interested in the bad air pollution in the cities accompanied by health hazard. In estimation of the speakers on theses grounds there will be no new big climate protection agreement in Paris in 2015. Probably China and also the USA – the two biggest players on energy market - will brake ambitious attempts. The current goals of climate control are not reachable, if China does not reconstruct its energy mix radically.