To many of us we knew that Trump
was not
sending any type of delegation to Bonn, Germany for this year UN’s
Climate Conference. That does not mean there is a presence here in Bonn from
US. Many people have come through different means of organizations. Many
colleges and universities have come to attend the conference, Moravian College
being one of these intuitions. However, others have come to watch and listen to
the negations of the Parties. Some these include non-governmental organizations
like Sierra Club and local government officials from the United States like
cities’ officials. Even under the current political climate back home in the
States, the people of the US are still participating at COP23 whether the
current administration refuses to.
With this year’s COP is under way
and week one is drawing to a close. One group has just arrived the other day on
Thursday Nov. 9th. The US Climate Action Center was set up to
represent those that are still committed to the Paris Agreement (PA) that was
done at COP21 back in 2015. This is the #WEARESTILLIN campaign that started
when President Trump “pulled” us out of the PA. These delegations of people
that represent many of the organizations those are still committed to the PA
from corporate players to grass roots organizations.
I was able to attend two
presentations in the US Climate Action Center, which is its own separate entity
from the other areas of the Conference. The first presentation I was able to
attend was a panel of experts with their talk Transforming the Carbon Markets
and Accelerating Reduction through Technology. The people on the panel included: Paul Bodnar
(Rocky Mountain Institute), Gavin McCormick (WattTime), Conor Kelly
(Mircosoft), and Herald von Heyden (Agder Energi). This panel discussed the
possibility of way for people to reduce the emissions and consumption of fossil
fuel energy. It would be through
Automated Emission Reduction (AER). In simple terms through smart technology
like phones, they could choose the best time to start charging. These times
would be when there is the most amount of renewables energy being producing to
the grid. All this takes a lot of
information to tell you when to plug in and charge your devices. Microsoft and
the Rocky Mountain Institute have partnered up to make this vision a reality. With this partnership they have reached out
and pulled in WattTime (http://watttime.org/),
which has been making it possible to communicate all this data of the status of
the grid in real time through their software.
Is anyone talking about demand reduction? That seems like an essential approach, but most tech companies swing the other way—don't reduce, just use smarter technology.
ReplyDeletePeter, do you mean demand in energy reduction overall? There is a lot of discussion of this and the smart technology is one means of knowing were efficiencies and reduction can be implemented.
ReplyDeleteI think it is amazing that people in the US are so saddened and defeatist about our country when we still have representation at this COP, just not the support of our administration. It says a lot about the legitimacy of our President and his cabinet that his own citizens are ignoring the fact that we aren’t, as a country, supporting it. Finding other ways through different organizations is an amazing thing and it just goes to show that you can do anything by gathering together and taking a stand.
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