Solar panels with a peninsula and sea in the background
Event_

Powering the Pacific: impacts, opportunities and challenges of a renewable transition

Experts and activists discuss the prospects of transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables in the Pacific as communities suffer from worsening disasters and low electrification rates.

Climate change is the greatest threat to Pacific Small Island Developing States, which face devastating impacts from rising sea levels and an increase in severe weather events. The region is also powered predominantly by imported fossil fuels and suffers from low electrification rates in many areas, making the transition to renewable energy a policy priority to reduce emissions and promote energy security and resilience.

A panel of activists and experts will highlight the impacts of fossil fuels on Pacific communities, what opportunities for renewable transition exist as well as the current lack of global environmental regulation in this space. This event seeks to examine how the Pacific region, as a moral and diplomatic leader in addressing climate change, is decarbonising and what role Australia can, and should play, in that process.

This event was presented online on Thursday 7 September 2021.

Speakers

Howard Bamsey is Chair of the Global Water Partnership and Honorary Professor in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University. He is a member of the Board of the Climate Policy Initiative and Climate Works Australia. He was previously Executive Director at the Green Climate Fund and Director General of the Global Green Growth Institute. Howard has served as Senior Advisor on Sustainable Development to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Special Adviser on Green Growth to AusAID.

David Ritter is the Chief Executive Officer of Greenpeace Australia Pacific.  He has been with Greenpeace for nine years, campaigning to secure an earth capable of nurturing life in all its amazing diversity. Prior to joining Greenpeace, David worked as an academic and a lawyer in both commercial and native title practices. David is a widely published commentator on politics, law, history and current affairs. His most recent book is The Coal Truth: The Fight to Stop Adani, Defeat the Big Polluters and Reclaim our Democracy (UWA Publishing, 2018).

Susan Park is a Professor of Global Governance at the University of Sydney. She focuses on how state and non-state actors use formal and informal influence to make the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) greener and more accountable. Susan is the Research Lead on Unsettling Resources, The Global Shift to Renewables and Environmental Disasters and Just Governance.

This event is part of the Unsettling Resources research project that investigates the dependence of our energy use and systems on conventional energy and the global shift to renewables. It questions the political and economic viability, and the accountability and justice of current energy use and systems, and how this is being transformed through ‘smarter mining’ of critical minerals for renewable technology.

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