In October 2017, Matter PR helped organise a thought leadership event at The Royal Society on Britain’s role in the global transition to a zero-carbon economy. We were working on behalf of EIT Climate-KIC UK & Ireland and in partnership with the All-Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group (APPCCG).

Over 100 guests attended the event, which was designed to support Climate-KIC’s positioning with UK Government and other stakeholders as a vehicle for supporting the delivery of the UK’s climate policy ambitions and to facilitate collaboration with European and international partners on major climate initiatives.

The keynote speaker, Baroness Brown of Cambridge, highlighted the links between climate change and economic growth. She began by looking at the good news: Greenhouse gas emissions down, UK GDP rising. She emphasised that power is a “low hanging fruit” in making further transformative change, closely followed by infrastructure and transport.

The discussion panel was chaired by Lord Hunt of Chesterton, and included representatives from the UK Committee on Climate Change, Innovate UK, Siemens, the ETI, and Germany.

During the discussion, panellist Professor John Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said that rich and innovative countries must fully decarbonise by 2050, taking on their fair share of innovation. He also spoke on how post-Brexit, we will need new ways of collaborating with the rest of the EU and cited the EIT Climate-KIC as the perfect facilitator for this.

Jo Coleman, Strategy Director at the Energy Technologies Institute, called on the UK to fund scale-up solutions to international challenges such as decarbonising heat.