Metals for the Energy Transition [EN]
July 16, 2022 from 11:45 am to 13:15 pm
Description:
The climate emergency leaves us no choice but to make a swift transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies. However, the wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles that we need in order to become climate-neutral require large quantities of metals. How does this hunger for metals affect the European Union’s strategic autonomy and global climate justice?
Do local and indigenous communities in mining regions in the Global South pay the price for our green ambitions? Are women disproportionately affected? Where is the climate justice in that? Does the supply chain due diligence that the EU is promoting represent a break with neo-colonial extractivism? Can better recycling of metals make a substantial contribution to reducing the demand for imported metals, thus strengthening the EU’s strategic autonomy? Or should Europeans look under their own feet for the metal ores they need?
The debate will build on the report Metals for a Green and Digital Europe that the Green European Foundation and Wetenschappelijk Bureau GroenLinks published in 2021. This report is available in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Polish and Czech.
Speakers:
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- Richard Wouters (moderator)
Richard Wouters is a researcher at Wetenschappelijk Bureau GroenLinks, the think tank of the Dutch Green Party. His work focuses on materials, energy and technology. For the Green European Foundation, he (co)authored reports on metals, hydrogen and smart cities.
- Diego Marin
Policy Officer at the EEB, focusing on environmental justice in relation to the energy transition. In addition, I am also looking into the how racism and prejudice affects environmental decisions and policy making and the consequential impacts on racialised communities.
- Zaklina Zivkovic
Zaklina Zivković, a political scientist by education, has been dealing with environmental protection policies, research and public advocacy since 2012. Executive director of the Organization for political ecology Polekol, one of the founders of Environmental Uprising initiative in Serbia fighting against pollution, overexploitation and privatization of nature commons in Serbia and region.
- Ewa Sufin-Jacquemart, Strefa Zieleni
Sociologist and former diplomate, Ewa is an active advocate of green values in Poland. She is President of the Board of the Green political foundation Strefa Zieleni, member of the Board of the Green European Foundation and member of the Board of the Women’ Congress Association.