t Following Paris:What We Can Do Now Jon Bloomfield. Thursday 28 th January Coventry.

The Paris Agreement A positive framework. Nowhere near good enough but a vast improvement on the last event in 2009 at Copenhagen. Potential for serious low carbon movement helped by: 1.a much wider political consensus 2.substantial progress on green energy e.g. costs of solar power have fallen 75% in the past five years; Wind co. Dong Energy investing £6 billion in the Humber by 2019.

The Paris Agreement “A robust, long term agreement will be an opportunity to usher in an era of growth that will be good for populations, good for prosperity and good for the planet.” Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – the organisers of COP21

The Follow-up Approach Apply the classic slogan: think global; act local. Translate the international to the city-region. Avoid passivity: do not just wait for national government action – or more likely in our case, inaction or bad action. Recognise the limitations of small, isolated projects, the ‘silo’ mentality.

Climate KIC. What are we learning? Climate Knowledge Innovation Community is the EU’s largest climate change programme. Midlands region been involved from the start in Education, entrepreneurship and innovation with €80 million budget. Key lessons the broad model of innovation: the social as well as the technical. All players involved. Not just an elite. Needs system change not just new products. Stakeholder engagement Set out transition pathways and action in bite-sized chunks.

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Observations on your action plan trying to bring all the players together in a ‘big tent’. Looking at key ‘end uses’ is very positive; group into clusters/topics but eight themes are too many. Try to group in three or four and see finance as cross- cutting. Assess priorities and targets for each theme link these closely to funding so you can chart out a pathway.

How can Climate KIC help? 1. host CKIC short courses introducing new thinking on low carbon transition e.g. two half-day courses a year. 2. link in to activities run by others e.g. Warwick University’s The Journey, when 40 PhD students from across Europe come to the city. 3.Work on urban issues with Birmingham within the framework of the combined authority. E.g. on mobility; renovation of buildings; low carbon urban planning; community energy including retrofit building development 4.Learn from good thinking elsewhere in Europe. Can only make breakthrough by working together.

One Aspect of the Future