 I am a journalist who specialises in energy in Spanish and we are going to talk about the economic decarbonisation and energy transition in the EU, one of the different meetings during this cycle that we are having, the post-COVID challenges and threats, something that has been sponsored by the GEF with the collaboration of La Casa Encendida and of the Foundation Transición Verde. There is a simultaneous translation for those of you who do not speak Spanish so that you can listen to the English version by clicking on an icon which is the globe and there is a word interpretation on top of it so you can always click on that. So you can listen to this debate both in English and in Spanish and I would like to benefit from this occasion because this coincides in time with news that could have an important impact on everything that has to do with energy and all the decisions that have to do with energy that have been made in Europe. On October 7th the European Parliament passed a new decision and the CO2 emissions needed to be even more ambitious so the percentage that had been approved a year before has now been set at 60%. We only need for the meeting of the European Council that will take place today and tomorrow allows us to reach a real commitment and during that meeting we will discuss this reduction of CO2 that the European Commission once, the Parliament won 60% and we see that there is resistance by some of the members. Why is it important to have this reduction of CO2 that we are admitting to the atmosphere up to 60%? Well, because scientists say that we are not making the right decisions and we're not doing it at the right pace in order to avoid an irreversible climate change and the risk of these changes that come down in a cascade is greater than what we expected two decades ago. The intergovernmental panel for climate change IPCC warned us of the fact that there are non-returned critical points that could be devastating such as the destruction of the Amazonian jungle and the loss of ice in Groneland and that is already happening. The EU is the leader in a change of energy policies and strategy that has an impact on our day-to-day to stop what seems unstoppable and they're working on a roadmap with very specific milestones for the reduction of CO2 but also with the use of renewable energies and energy efficiency. It seems that in Europe the change is already taking place. We could say that renewables are now dominating the new installed capacities in Europe and last year they were even greater than fossil fuels as the main source for the production of energy in Europe for the first time in history. 37.5% of electricity production in our continent came from renewable energies and 34.3% were fossil fuels and 28% was nuclear energy but it's not enough. Now with the pandemic following up closely we meet that change and Unzan Boruslav van der Leyen presented her Green Deal, well the Green Deal for all Europeans, the Green Pact. She presented some objectives and she wanted to promote efficiency and take efficiency and they needed a new policy that is based on circular economy and way of building that is more efficient that is more responsible so these are big words that bring hope so that we can reduce our emissions even up to 90% in 2050 that is what we're looking for that's the objective we're looking for zero emission horizon and COVID well we has happened and now we're talking even more about green reconstruction and the EU wants to mobilize a billion euros in a decade to promote this transition towards a green economy, a low carbon economy and that is why we have an emergency fund that has been approved that has 750 million euros that will follow that road map but with the very clear idea it needs to be a green future digital future that will resist when faced to climate change but I am not the person who can best explain what are the steps that we need to take from now onwards if we want to have a society or a future that is more sustainable and that is actually possible those who can really explain that to us are the experts that we have invited here today who are around this digital round table and we will be talking about deco-organization if possible and that energy transition energy transition so we have Marie Toussaint who is a legal expert French legal expert and she is a euro MP she is a green MP and she is a member of the industry committee research and energy committee and we also have Pedro Piedro Piedro with us he is the vice president of Biden the association for the study of energy resources who has been a consultant in development construction and operations for many different PV projects and he is a consultant with regards to energy in general and he will be talking about his book most probably because it is the center of his discourse and finally Giorgio Scali who is a professor at Crea the research institution in Catalonia and he is also a member of it from the autonomous university of Barcelona where he researches on ecological economy but I don't want to take any more of your time they will all have some minutes to share with us their position with regards to this question whether it is possible to reach that decarbonization and we will start with Giorgio's who is going to open up this debate so Giorgio's I give you the floor thank you very much Laura thank you very much for inviting me to this event I am going to start this debate in a way that might be a bit more general and then we will zoom in into the topic at hand so my role is to develop the idea or this vision that is a bit more general about what we call degrowth what do we mean by degrowth what does it mean and I'm only going to touch upon how relevant this is what we're mentioning here today which is decarbonization I believe that better is going to dig deeper into the energy system that we need and why we need this new system for degrowth but in order to stand with the debate I'm going to really leave it at a philosophical and social level although I'm not a philosopher I started my career after university working at the European Parliament so I started with politics and then I started taking steps backwards because I wanted to understand where all of this comes from and how we can think about these things about these problems these issues in a deeper way and we need to get away from what's immediate and what's political so that we can see it so what do we mean by degrowth we do not mean obviously that we need a recession and we're not the champions of a collapse of the economy we are not calling for what is happening currently with all the lockdowns and the chaos of an economy that we can no longer manage if there isn't constantly an expansion of the set of economies what we want to say with degrowth maybe the word is not the perfect word but it's really a call for action in a society that needs to have a culture and institutions that set limits the keyword here is limits we have to self limit ourselves we need to have a society that limits itself that gets rid of this constant this constant game of of expanding constant expansion constant colonization constant constant growth so the idea of degrowth is is this this idea that we can live well within limits planetary limits but also personal limits and collective limits as well because without limits it's not just that we are destroying what's outside but without limits we can't live in in freedom there is no freedom without limits and that is the main argument of a book that I published last year called limits it's going to be translated into Spanish and Catalan next year in with the publishing house from Barcelona and the that was the main argument of my book that the problem the problem we face with climate change is not about what policies are we going to implement or what energy systems we're going to put in place but rather this is a cultural program we have lost the capacity as a society of thinking that we could live with limits and we need to understand that the real freedom is not being able to overcome those limits but rather understanding and accepting those limits and living within those limits and in the book I have a limit that could really capture this idea better than my theory theoretical word this idea of freedom within limits it is the idea of a pianist in order to play a piano they need a piano which is a limited instrument if you give a pianist a piano that is endless they cannot play something that's interesting they cannot function they can it's a complete collapse and this anthropological idea cultural idea that our society has of wanting the unlimited is in the base in the basis of this unending growth is the main cultural problem that we live nowadays and those of us who speak about the growth are calling for the re-establishment of a culture and institutions of limits of sufficiency of living with what we have and to be satisfied with what we have there's always been people who went against their times and against the prevalence of of the society to modern society there's always been people who fought for this idea of limits of living within limits we can even go before the modern ages and talk about the old days and talk about philosophy and the institutions of the old Greece and Greek so that is why I talk about about Greece but I think that in that sense Greeks and the more you go to the east the better you understand limits and the old Greeks were a civilization a society that was based on the idea of limits they were institutionalized in that idea of limits but also during during modern times the romantics also and the anarchists of the beginning of the century and feminists such as Goldman and the environmental movement of the 70s in their more radical way which unfortunately has been lost in the 80s and the 90s the environmental movement was a movement and these were groups of people who who asked for limits they asked for us to understand that we can live well between limits and they put it on the table and they defended that idea it was a proposal for a good life it was not just about saying that the world is going to be destroyed and we're destroying the world and we need to limit ourselves no they were really and they were really saying that the life that makes sense is that which has limits and that's the idea of the radical environmental movement that has such a long history that we are asking to defend as a community as intellectuals and activists that defend the growth the growth means that we put a limit to growth to this never ending growth which is a crazy idea such a crazy idea as the old gods that all civilizations believed in and the idea that economy can grow 3% every year and it can be 12 times bigger at the end of this century and that it can be endless in size in two three centuries is an idea that is clearly crazy but that is an idea that our society is based on without growth we find collapse so those of us who talk about deep growth want to escape this craziness of the limit less idea that brings us to chaos and start thinking about how we can organize and institutionalize the society that is based in limits in the new book that I published with my colleagues Susan Federico Maria and Simon Alisa last year which is called the case for deep growth it is it's what deep growth defense we were trying to set in a concrete way this idea what do we mean by a deep growth society how is it built and we did not just start with the big policies and the big changes where we need to set limits but rather we focused on what is happening now we already have in our territory we have people who are organizing themselves in a different way what are the cultures that we have that are producing something different and that are defending it right now and we mainly focused on what is called the economy of common good or solitary or social economy the infrastructure that it has and the culture that it already has although it's small it's a minority culture it gives us a different imagination an image of sufficiency of limits and based on this social infrastructure that we already have we ask ourselves in the book how this can be amplified and how can we organize it politically so that their ideas and their way of living the way they have decided to live our generalized are not just maintained as something that only a minority does so that it is not seen as another culture so that this culture can be mainstream and the prevailing culture and we talk about political strategies that can be set up but we also talk about some concrete policies that political parties nowadays who are being mobilized by these collective by these people who are using it on our day-to-day we can open the new spaces so that we can live well without growth and this is not theoretical this is very specific the key this is the key word of the current phase we live in how can we have an economy in a society that works and that is not collapsed when there is a need such as the one that we currently have with pandemic with a pandemic such as we have it right now how can we distribute resources from these representatives the non-necessary to the necessary and to keep on working we have proposals in our book about carbon rates about what we call green new deal but in a very different way without needing to to think about constant growth we have ideas of how to support solidary economy which is central the reduction of working hours and another institution that we believe is fundamental is having a universal salary for the care society because that's the most important work that we are all doing and even more so during those difficult times now with regards to energy and I will end in a couple minutes because I think that Pedro is going to complement my my speech quite well with regards to energy what we need and I'm talking about a general idea but what we still need at the EU at the political level is that we don't have any references to the idea of sufficiency or limits or the idea of consumption and demand of energy I mean it's very good to set up resources and spend money in investing for the deco-organization I think it is key that the energy that we produce in the next 20 30 years is renewable without that we will never advance it cannot just be about reducing consumption if we keep on using carbon energies but what I do think that what is basic and still it's something that hasn't been touched upon and we need to fight so that this is present is the idea of sufficiency how much energy does the EU need how much energy do we need to live well and how much can we reduce our energy consumption the one that we currently have and I'm not just talking about efficiency measures I'm also talking about sufficiency measures how many activities can we stop that are superfluous that are not needed and how much production do they consume how much can we reduce our consumption so that we can save phenomenal amounts of energy so that we can reach that level that we want for 2050 and the rest of the work can be done with investment in renewable energies that's what I believe yes yes could we please start finishing I'm in my 12 minutes but yes and to finish with a more quantitative aspects I would say that all the aspects that we're working on right now we're talking about scenarios of energy transition after this period until 2050 we don't see any physical scenario where we could be between 1.5 or 2 degrees of a global warmth which is the objective of the EU after the Paris and the all require a drastic reduction of energy and I think that that has to do with economic activity the only way for the IPCC scenarios are the EU scenarios could work so that we are within those temperatures is imagining technologies that are going to be absorbing carbon in the future but that doesn't exist and it's not and it's not maybe will never exist so the key question is can we reduce to 3% our energy use on a yearly basis and how okay thank you very much George I just wanted to remind all of you who are following up on this debate you can ask your questions by using the chat I'm sure that our experts will be happy to answer to your questions and we will now give the floor to Pedro Prieto who has been mentioned during the previous presentation so he will now share with us his vision okay thank you thank you very much Laura thank you for your presentation it was a very kind presentation and I would like to thank the organizers the Green European Foundation Transición Verde and La Casa Entendida for their collaboration I have been hello hello yes yes yes we can hear you we can hear you don't worry okay so I was I was happily surprised where George Joe's introduction because usually you expect economic information from an economist but he has actually been philosophical and social but he has also talked about economy and talking about deep roads is being very courageous very brave in this economic system that we're in so I would try to think I would like to tackle this quite briefly it will not take me more than 10 minutes and what I did want to do I don't know if you'll allow me to show you a slide I don't know if you'll be able to see it I could try and show you the slide so that you can see let's see if I can do this and if I can then I will start talking let's see no I can't this is not the one can you see something no we only see you so you don't see oh I haven't hit on the button share so I think I'm going to I'm going to try yes I'm going to try I'm going to share my screen and I'm going to show it here let's see if I can try it can you see it yes we can see it perfectly okay so if you take a look at this what we usually see in this world is that we talk a lot about what the problem is what's the problem the the sea is going on the desertification polar bears are dying their forest fires but this this is the derivative then when we talk about the process then we talk about the fact that temperatures are increasing there is there is global warming so if it is overture would be catastrophic so then we think about the causes of why temperature is going up and why there is global warmth that takes us to the first derivative which is the CO2 emissions which is the objective of this presentation we have gone from 280 parts per million to 415 parts per million that are going on dramatically and then we have an information black hole which is talking about what we've always talked and then and then we just talk about renewable energies and we talk about it just as business as usual so renewables as we know them just to maintain the world as we know it will will save our life 100% but then we forget about the last part which is the fact that we have burned 11,500 million tons per year of fossil fuels and I wanted to talk about that I don't know if you can see this can you see this other slide can you see the next slide yes yes we can okay you can see it well this is Sanctis diagram from the international energy agency and this is energy consumed in 2018 we are burning 14 billion tons of fossil fuel 86% are fossil fuels and this will generate electricity here which is a generation with 72.3% I'm talking about the world I'm not talking about Europe because we talked about Europe and we said that in Europe there is a greater percentage of renewable energies in the generation of electricity but worldwide we are still around 72.3% with fossil fuels and since the problem of global warmth is something global not just European although our work is to start with Europe that is where we stand we have a problem and then we have a whole series of energy systems where in the end at the end to your right you have the industry that is burning 2800 million tons out of which 64% are fossil fuels transportation which is all fossil fuels and then residential consumption which represents around 1400 million tons and then we have non-energy uses which are for instance plastics and the use of oil and fossil fuels that are not energy uses and all of this to maintain the industry in general and from there I go to the next slide which is how this is distributed how the energy consumption is distributed the world over and it is not well distributed it is following the Pareto diagram which is a non-balance a very serious balance and the whole population we have at the base is the human population we're talking about 770 million inhabitants we have to the left the richest people in the planet who are consuming oil gas carbon uranium and renewable energies almost disappearing this diagram and then we have for instance countries such as China that are very much carbon carbon oriented they consume less but they're still there and this balance shows that 70% of the population are consuming 30% of the energy and the other 30% of the population is eating up 70% of the world production and the world energy consumption and this should make us think even us who believe are green such as Norwegians and Finnish or Swedish who are always saying that they're very green but when the energy per capita is established they're always at the higher end of world consumption and many of them with a very high consumption of fossil fuels so we are overcoming 60% the load capacity of the planet according to William Rice with whom I have a great friendship and finally if what we think is that we should all have the European level of life this would be the situation right now we would require to double the energy consumption so we're living in a world where the system is completely unsustainable and I don't want to say what would happen if we were to live in the American the American the American way of life we would have to double we would have to multiply by four our consumption capacity to maintain that level of life and the structures that were saying this is not sustainable this cannot be sustained so we have to find other methods another methodology and why well because of all the methodologies we have this the way in which we distribute resources makes us not even think about just the fact that we are a country that is going to build lots of renewable energies we have to distribute better and we need to extract less and Europe what it generally does is an economic entity a very important economic entity in the world together with the US Japan and China nowadays but logically we are extracting the rest of the world and then and then we consume it so all of this is a situation that we need to tackle and we need to analyze with much seriousness when we talk about decarbonizing because we are talking about decarbonizing but for instance if you look at this curve the energy consumption is directly linked with GDP with what we call economic activity it is almost a straight line if we want to GDP we are going to increase our energy consumption we can do it in an ecological way well yes maybe these straight lines could be a bit more curved as we see here with the green line at the higher part but there is a reality there is a determination rate that is quite direct that shows that if we want to have economic activity as the one that we currently have then we have to consume a lot of energy and now focusing on Europe in Europe this is something that the previous energy commissioner had proposed he said that we needed to reduce our CO2 emissions down to zero in 2050 but he said by maintaining a sustained growth of 2% per year of our GDP so we would be here in this vertical line and Europe was going down that was the red line with regards to energy consumption and our GDP kept on going up so what Arias Cagnete proposed here what he intended what a European commissioner intended in this action for climate and for energy was to keep on having the GDP grow up till 2050 and have a deep growth in energy consumption but that is almost impossible because what Europe is doing is send emissions and extractions outside of Europe but then if you go to the world and you look at this that if the GDP goes up in the world is because the energy consumption is going up and the emissions are also going up which is the CO2 that's the red line so how the hell are we going to manage to have emissions go down to zero while we still see GDP grow in a definite way so I agree with George just in that point and I don't want to take more of your time because I'm sure that we will have time to talk about these topics with all of the participants and with the speakers so thank you very much thank you very much Pedro and it's true because we have lots of questions asked by the participants but we are going to wait for Marie's presentation she said that she is going to try and do her presentation in Spanish so she will tell us from her point of view how she sees the decarbonization of the economy so go ahead Marie thank you for having me and thank you for your interventions I'm going to try and do it in Spanish and if it is a catastrophe then just let me know well we have a translator in case you want to switch into English so in order to begin I would like to say that I really liked listening that talk about limits to the planet and justice as well because I think that these are topics that are at the center at the core of what we need to do nowadays so we're going to talk a bit about the topic of energy and climate in the EU but I also want to open up the debate so that we can so that I can answer to what was said before my intervention I also wanted to congratulate Laura because she did she painted a very complete landscape of the situation of the political situation here in Europe I could not have done it better than she did so that is the beginning of this debate so what we have set up till now was that Europe is is not completely on the right way for for neutral for climate neutrality we're all talking about climate neutrality for 2050 but the objectives that have been set in the law currently did not allow for us to reach that that neutrality we only can reach 60 percent reduction of missions CO2 emissions and another emissions other gases so and and that's without talking about the imported emissions with the delocalized emissions because for instance in France we have we currently produce more CO2 and other gases that in 1990 because we are delocalizing or importing emissions so those are the emissions that we do not produce in our territories but that we have sent outside and that is not the object of any trajectory or any strategy so if we talk about the emissions that we that we see within our countries where the current laws we would reach only a 60 percent reduction of our emissions by 2050 so it would not be climate neutral so we have to increase this we need to have better objectives and where are we well right now the commission is talking about 55 percent as an objective for 2030 the next 10 years are the years where we can really act and if we do not act during the next 10 years then it will be the end so we have to act but the commission is talking about 55 and it's still less than that it's around 50 50 percent because they're including in their calculations trees and other sources of carbon capture that are correct in figure so it's not really 55 percent but the mission is talking about that and last week the European Parliament voted for the for reaching the objective of 60 percent 60 percent if we listen to scientists would allow us to reach up to 1.9 degrees of global warming so so even the 60 percent objective for 2030 would not even guarantee the objectives that were agreed upon in Paris is my Spanish good enough yes perfect okay good then I'll continue yes we can follow up on we can follow you we can follow along so and what many scenarios show is that it is possible to reach climate neutrality in 2040 we don't need to wait until 2050 it could be possible by 2040 and we could reach a higher percentage that what has been put on the table right now and what we know from Denmark Finland and Sweden is that nowadays in the European Council they are giving their support to an objective of at least 60 percent so they're ready to go beyond 60 percent but obviously there are countries that are blocking that have always been blocking these political objectives when I was talking about the different scenarios I was talking about these scenarios that think tanks and ecological associations are considering such as megawatt that are still talking about climate neutrality with that nuclear energy but there are also lobbies nuclear lobbies such as NE or or NG these are companies that favor fossil fuels who say that it is possible to reach climate neutrality in 2040 okay so we also have good news so let's continue with that figure that is being defended at the European Parliament 60 percent which is something but we've also managed to ask for the creation of a high council a high council for climate as we have it in France with independent scientists who can say whether we're following the right track or not and that is very important and also we have made progress because we asked for a carbon budget and the idea is for for us to look every five years at the situation and what we want to do with this carbon budget to decide whether we go beyond or if we are still lagging behind and we also have made progress with regards to different sectors of the economy and their trajectory that is good and we have to fight against well actually right now companies are protecting their investments how do you say that investments they're telling her how to say it in Spanish so companies are protecting their investments even in fossil fuels and the EU and member states can't do anything in that sense so what we asked for was for states and the EU to be protected against those or from those companies that want to protect their investments so the thing is that we don't have the right objectives the objectives that we really would need in order to protect the climate and and it's the same thing with all the Green Deal laws when you look at the Green Deal in when you when you look at the Green Deal for the 1930s it was a new contract between the economy and the society and what the European Commission is not proposing a new deal it's not a new contract there is no discussion about the reform of the financing or the reform of subsidies to fossil fuels or the creation of or the recognition of the rights of the environment there's nothing in there about that what we have is a series of legislations that need to be changed with better environmental objectives but we still don't have what we need but well it's better than living in the US or in China or India or in Brazil so so we're fighting so that things can be better and I have one example an example that I want to share with you and then I will talk a bit about the growth so that we can open the debate and then I'll stop but it says an example which is gas we have to fight against gas gas called natural gas but it is a fossil fuel it is a fossil energy and we have to fight against it because all lobbies are here really rooting for gas and in all the budgets that are proposed for the European Commission or the European Parliament they say that this is a transition energy and it's not an energy transition it is an energy that is killing us and the thing is that nowadays we are deciding about investments that are going to last 30 40 years for instance infrastructures and we still don't know when the public subsidies will end for those infrastructures for fossil fuels we are really fighting a lot but it is estimated that we will have to invest at least a hundred billion I'm sorry 100 billion euros and lots of those millions are public money in those infrastructure projects in the next few years if that's all right with you could you please finish so that we can start with the questions because we have lots of questions I'm really sorry because since it's in Spanish it's a bit harder for me no that's great it's just so that we don't go over the time but if you want I can give you more examples about the gas and the problems that we have and we have to face low peace because low peace are deciding where our money is being invested and that is that is something that is really bad when we talk about hydrogen and when we talk about the need to have a green hydrogen one of the main worries that we have is that that it will be the hydrogen lobbyists who will decide again how we're going to spend our money and where we're going to invest our money so in the end I wanted to say that there is a conversation about deep growth and it and it maybe it gives you a bad idea or you can imagine something that is wrong but if we talk about the limits of the planet then maybe that gives of what we're talking about but the way in which I see economy it's an economy of the rights of nature I already talked about the rights of nature from a legal point of views well okay so we have to give a legal statute to ecosystems but if we see it applied to economy what we have to do is develop and imagine an economy that is adapting itself to the pace of nature so we mustn't plan it all because when we think that we have a solution and we develop it all over the place it's always a problem but if we adapt ourselves if we always adapt to the needs of nature then we will develop another way another kind of economy that is good for the planet and good for human beings and I'll okay thank you thank you so much I I've actually been reading some questions that are very good for instance Marta Martina was asking I think it was a question for Georgios I think that Georgios could maybe answer how to tell countries or institutions that degrowth is a theory that needs to be done when the growth and when the growth and economic growth is about GDP growing Mari has also talked about this but maybe Georgios could complete this how can we make them understand that that is the way well I think that what's important is to have more people being aware of the idea that growth constant growth nowadays is a false objective is an idea that takes us to to collective suicide if we have people who are aware of the fact that that is true then governments are not aliens from other countries from other planets who are high up above and don't know what we're thinking if it is a common thinking if many people share this vision then the governments that we choose will have to react and I think that we are entering at a very different phase a different era different to the 90s or to the beginning of the 2000s the economy right now is collapsing and it's collapsing because it's reaching its limits not just its environmental limits but also social and economic limits we cannot exploit more and more people to produce more more revenue for the economy to grow so nowadays the current system has hundreds limits and it cannot keep on going without us exploiting people or the nature so so we have to think about alternatives I think that there are people who will listen I'm not going to insist on degrowth but but I think that there are many things that are linked to degrowth and many of the proposals that we currently have and that we are sending to local and national governments are proposals that can be debated they're radical yes they're radical but they can be debated for instance one one universal salary for caretakers we can debate this I know it is quite radical but it is also something that is reasonable okay following this idea Laura talent said that we are not analyzing the limits with regards to material resources for renewable energies and I think that this is also interesting in the psychological transition or energy transition George's for instance tell us how would you see this how would you see this this topic well it's actually very important this because it's true that our transition towards renewable energies which is what what what we all hope for what we hope would happen and as Marie explained it's very important it's very difficult but if we were to manage this transition if we go up to the level of consumption that we currently have and if we keep on growing at the rates that we are growing we would be talking about a demand of materials that would be that would come from a part of the world that are already exploited and it would be enormous so we wouldn't be able to do it so what can we do well how can we put limits we can set limits I think that we can set limits as we have always set limits with legislation and with rates so these are political instruments quotas and legislation this is effective I think that for the limit of the use of resources but it is very difficult from a political standpoint because there is always a position and there's always a position because obviously this clashes against the immediate revenue and immediate wealth creation so we have to set limits to resources for instance how much how many resources can the Spanish economy use or how can how much can be exported from Africa or Latin America can we institutionalize this can we legislate can we set limits for carbon materials so that so that we can limit them well that's interesting Pedro Juan Arias from Coppe Radio said that the international energy agency has just published this 2020 outlook which was quite surprising due to the conclusions that they that they draw from it could you tell us what you think about this in briefly briefly okay briefly I think that the best conclusion has already been offered by Antonio Turiel on his blog will crash because I think it is a great summary of what happens if I were to summarize this I would say that it's weak it's the first time that I report that usually is 700 pages long has only been 400 pages long and has turned the international agency of energy into an international weather agency or medicine agency because they talk about COVID and of the scenarios that they consider for 2040 but two of them have to do with COVID and the other two scenarios have to do with sustainable growth and the energy agency still thinks about sustainable growth and there is no sustainable growth in a finite world Albert already said it professor from the University of Colorado the main incapacity of human beings is understanding the these functions there is a problem with growth as Joe just said and that is a problem so I would I would simply to give you an idea of order of magnitude I don't know if I could just show you one slide can you see the slide now no no we cannot see it okay I'm going to share it can you see in that okay so to your left you see what the world energy outlook says and what they wish to do or what they think they will do with solar energy which is here and wind energy until 2040 and also with other low carbon energies and what they expect to do with oil and with carbon I'm sorry with carbon with coal and gas so oil even more because if we analyze oil for 2040 they think that we if there aren't any other investments because there are no investments we could have a scenario of going from 100 million barrels a day to 20 million barrels a day so this shows what this represents and the objectives of the international energy agency which is an international body where all the countries are represented because because it's mainly OECD countries so rich countries they call it the watchdog of rich OECD countries what they are considering as renewable energies is here for 2040 and what they are thinking will degrow due to the peak oil demand so that we have lost our energy appetite after 160 years growing economically in energy consumption now they say that there is no problem with energy but it's just because we have lost our appetite and we're going to consume less on a yearly basis but they don't know how so this is oil this is carbon this is coal and this is gas obviously it is not going to be a good compensation and we're talking about 164 million terabytes per year so 40,000 terabytes more but they're going down but the rest how would you modify it with renewable energies they have an important problem of contradiction there is a contradiction in the international energy agency that's how I can summarize it okay so it's quite interesting if you want we could talk about this through those forecasts later on but before I wanted to give the floor to Pepeladios well actually a question that Pepeladios asked for Marie because the EU is thinking of lots of investments for green nitrogen and in and electrical cars do you think that this is feasible or do you think that is just wasting energy and money it's a very good question a very good question because there is a problem here if I get if I don't get it wrong how green hydrogen they don't say green hydrogen it's just hydrogen and they're talking about lots of different colors gray blue and green and well and brown yes true I think that we're going to avoid the hydrogen of fossil fuels that's the one that comes from gas from natural gas as I said previously but we will have this hydrogen that comes from gas and we will have hydrogen that that comes from nuclear energy as well especially in France and we will have some green hydrogen so what we need we are not going to manage having managed reaching all of our climate objectives it we don't have green hydrogen but what we're missing out on is a strategy a sobriety energy strategy we don't have any plan for 2020 for 2040 for 2050 we have nothing drafted by the Commission that would set the line or the path to energy sobriety I mean they say it but they don't do it and with cars it's a more of the same really it's still a dream it's yes yes a dream so everyone is dreaming about this about driving with cars that are not polluting that are not polluting thank you thank you Laura for correcting my Spanish but the truth is that we we have a problem which is the problem of mineral products not mineral products but products that are needed for those cars to be built and those products come from China and other parts in the world but they're finite as well and we also have the problem of batteries that work with electricity so in the end it's just a dream we think that everyone is going to have an electric car but we cannot do it if we want to protect the environment our natural resources it's just a it's just a dream and what we need to do is reduce in an ambitious way the number of cars but we also need to take into account the social injustice and one of the main problems we face is that those who have cars those who have the oldest cars but also many people who did not live just in front of a train station are the ones who are poor and that is also a serious problem because before I met with you I was meeting with the intergroup of fight against poverty for the human rights in the European Parliament and we were with people who live in extreme poverty and they were saying that they are ashamed they are ashamed I'm sorry they are ashamed of being poor and not being able to act for the environment and we have to to avoid that we need to fight against that because ecology cannot be a reason for dominating the poor it cannot be something that dominates the poor we need to fight for a healthy environment for everyone well talking about degrowth and talking about finite resources and mineral resources for the industry of electric cars there is a concept that the EU has passed or is clearly supporting which is circular economy I would like to know if any of you or all of you could could tell me about the role of what role could have this circular economy in this system of of degrowth if I could start I would say that circular economy does not exist if we think of thermodynamics it does not exist we're talking about recycling lithium well lithium can only be recycled up to 2% and recycling 99% of lithium would require a immense amount of energy to take all batteries all lithium batteries from mobiles and cars because a car battery could weigh up to 500 kilos and then take them to two or three centers or 10 or 20 centers that could recycle those batteries from an energy point of view it is not possible no no circular economy exists in that sense what exists is frugality you need to be frugal in your consumption and that megawatt that Mary was talking about well yes the less we consume the better but circular economy to think that we're going to keep on consuming and that we're going to recycle 100% of what we are that we are just vomiting on the world does not exist Georgia's okay let's see I can be a bit more well I also am quite critic with regards to circular economy but I think that one of the ideas that are now defended under this umbrella term of circular economy are some some interesting important ideas we could say that there have always been there and they've always ecologists have always defended them they're not new but the EU is now using these this new fashion every five ten years we we talked about the same things with new words but I think that the idea of regeneration about focusing on the regeneration of ecosystems and the utility of the economy and recycle as much as we can as what as Pedro was saying it cannot be 100% and and in many cases it cannot be over 40% because it would consume too much energy or the idea of having cycles within the economy that are more close that are not linear I think that these are good ideas but they always have to be connected with the idea of reducing consumption so can consumption and production cannot be magically turned into a circle I think that some people talk about circular economy and some of them I read them and I do not agree but others talk about this and I do agree I think that we're on a similar wavelength and they understand that circular economy also needs to be an economy that is smaller and that is organized in a different way so yes I agree with certain things in that concept and yes Marie could you briefly respond to this circular economy alternative solutions okay there are the same risks as with those solutions that we were talking about previously when we think that we have a solution and we expanded and put it all over the face and in the end it turns out as a problem it's just like with electric cars circular economy can be producing more to recycle more it can be that as well and even if we don't take into account toxic products yes it can also be dangerous it can be dangerous as well so there is a circular economy that we mustn't accept and a circular economy that is good that is very good for instance it has to do with social economy for instance it can be something good for society but when the EU does things it needs and we all have to change this with the help of development when we have money we want to finance activities and we choose the big companies the big projects and that also is a problem because what we need with circular economy more specifically is to go to the smallest companies smallest associations smallest bodies of social and solidarity economy to help them develop a new economic model I am being told that we are really sorry from the organisation that there is a troll in the chat and they are trying to fix that I think they have already fixed the problem but they are apologising for everything that this troll is doing trying to ruin this debate there are people who are very bored in their lives but now let's go to another interesting question which comes from Carmen Molina she asks how we can reach climate neutrality in 2040 without communicating this in the right way to the citizenship so that it's not just a political decision so that it is also done in a way that convinces the whole population yes very good question yes I think it's a very good question because I've been asking myself this question and asking this question to political leaders for 15-20 years and the answer is always the same so now that Marie is there and she is a person who is very much aware I'm going to ask her that question so that she can try and move it around the European Parliament because what I think is that the time has come as Churchill said and he is not my favourite person to quote but he said that the time of procrastination has ended and now we are in the period of consequences so we have to tell people clearly Princess I'm going to talk about my country Spain a very specific case tourism gives jobs to 2.5 million workers and it represents 15-30% of our GDP but 35-38% of Canary Islands GDP and the Balearic Islands and we have to tell to people from the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands that these parties are over even if we lose our positions as MPs we have to start looking for another way of making ends meet because people who travel for 6 hours to spend a week in a Jacuzzi in a low cost hotel so that they can then go back to their countries with their little all-inclusive bracelet is a system that is broken and it's not coming back and not because of the COVID but because the model is ended and we have to tell that to the citizenship and when I talk about tourism in our country that represents 15% of our GDP I could talk about cars as well we have to talk to big trade unions and tell them that they have to tell their workers that this model is over that it is over having a car that weighs 2000 kilos whether it's electric or not to transport a person who can walk and transport humor herself we have to change our city model Marie was talking about a real problem cities are such big monsters that it's impossible to live in them and we have to tell citizens from big cities to leave big cities as soon as possible in an orderly manner because that cannot be maintained and I've talked quite a lot so now for the rest to speak there is another question that is very much linked to that I'm going to ask it because it's the same person who asked that question Carmen Molina and I think it's a very interesting question because she talks about how can we also put a limit to demographic growth because this is a topic that has never been touched upon because it's too delicate a matter but I think it's crucial so judges since you haven't touched you haven't intervened this question is for you I think that in European countries and in Spain we have to put a limit to the idea that we have to increase population because the population is already I think I think the population is reducing itself I think that the trend in the Spanish population is of degrowth in most European countries I think it's the same trend to degrowth I am not the right person to say what others need to do especially people in context that I do not know of and the population discourse sometimes can be very problematic because we avoid thinking about our responsibility as consumers but also as producers and as political systems that are exploiting the rest of the world and and obviously I think that this this is in the end and we think that it is a problem of the poor people who have lots of kids and they have lots of kids because of the same reason we had lots of kids because in the economy where they live to survive you need more kids you need more children so how can you escape that trap that vicious circle well we know that we need to strengthen the rights of women so that they can control their bodies so that they can decide how many children they have and when and to establish systems well-being systems and where people have their survival ensured without having to have an extended family so these are factors that have worked we have seen that they work that they have worked in European countries and the population is not increasing I don't want to be boring but I think that the capitalistic system and growth system needs for population to grow so now we are starting to see that discourse that Spain is going to have problems who is going to pay for the pensions we need to increase our population and so on and I know there are a lot of people in the US who are also very much worried for climate change and for instance a journalist who is very well known who says a billion people are needed in the US they think that that is the the best vision so doubling the population of the US and that is now also seeing a flat line it is increasing due to immigration but they want to stop immigration so this is a progressive argument so increasing population to double the population so we have to fight against this and also we have to strengthen the rights of people so that people can choose how to plan their families and systems well-being systems that will ensure the livelihood of those families and these are things that can control that idea the population when your book will be published in Spanish I hope that soon but I don't know when I hope that it will be published in January February but depends on the publishing house and now for everyone what do you think about the fact that according to the IPCC we depend on all the technologies to capture CO2 and nuclear energy as well because some members of the IPCC also talk about this energy so mainly CO2 capture so do you think that it is still a problem to trust in technology and progress Marie? Yes yes obviously it's a problem it's a problem and these technologies are not working currently so it's just a dream it's the dream of growth of constant progress and it's not possible it's not possible that we human beings who are supposedly serious believed in those technologies and we thought that they would save us and would save the ecosystem but I also wanted to go back to what Pedro was saying previously because I don't know if you have the same situation in Spain and I don't know if we have the same system all over Europe because in France we have studies that show that if everyone were to use all of their tools to save the climate but were to do it at our own level were to do it at our own level it would only help to reduce emissions for the country down to 25 percent that's the reason why we need to change the system because it's the system it's transportation it's megalopolis which make us consume so much if all of us were to do everything that we can it would not save the planet it would not save biodiversity it would not save the climate it would not and would not allow us to respect the planet's limits and it's very important we need to understand that that is the reason why we have to act against lobbies lobbies that have all their doors open and we have to fight so that we can so that we can point our finger at crimes against the environment and ecosystems and all of the things that are happening we have to stop this because this is it's the system that needs to be changed and it is urgent yes but with regards to these technologies in the case of carbon capture for instance it is technology that is not very mature but with regards to nuclear energy what's your vision it's problematic no clear TCS and hydrogen as I've already told you are usually proposed as solutions by the industries by the companies that produce these energies they say we have to save the climate so we have to develop our energies and that is quite problematic because many of those energies such as hydrogen green hydrogen are good but others are very very dangerous this is nuclear energy we don't know how how to deal with waste with nuclear waste it is very very very dangerous and then we have Chernobyl Fukushima that's very dangerous and I come from a country where we have developed nuclear energy all over the place and we didn't know and we don't know how to build new nuclear nuclear stations we are actually no longer knowledgeable with regards to nuclear and it is very very expensive with the money that nuclear energy requires we could we could have 100% renewable energy by 2040 in the EU we could do it but we have to get out of nuclear energy get our money out of nuclear energy to invest on renewable energies really renewable energies but nuclear lobbies are very strong right now because of climate policies and sometimes we win sometimes we lose it depends on the week in the European Parliament to try and to try to avoid for them to get money from the EU and climate policies going back to degrowth as Karvalier was saying how can we make the idea of degrowth compatible or sustainable growth well we said it's not synonyms and as far to the fourth revolution in this case I think he is referring to the digital revolution how can we combine degrowth and digitalisation which seems to be the the magical solution to get out of the pandemic yes Pedro go ahead I come from the Telco world so I think that we should end with a myth of the digital world the digital world right now the ICTs information and communication technologies are consuming up to 9% of the world's energy so they're not free what we thought we thought that by digitising we were going to ask for a kilo of potatoes and it would get her home without consuming energy well that's not true so we made by digital order a person driving his car that consumes energy will get to our home and this is a voracious system the biggest internet servers and the biggest communication centres are consuming energy in an exponentially growing way and they're starting to put in danger the stability of our energy grid if we follow this trend I think that the internet is also the biggest victims of our industrial society and technological society and I'm really sorry because I've been promoting Telcos for 30 years in my life but as I see it nowadays I think it's not neutral it's not neutral it could help in many cases and as a matter of fact I'm sure that we have managed to save many trips thanks to this conference and thanks to remote teleworking people are consuming less and this is a great report the sheet project that talks about the fact that pornography consumes as much energy as Greece as the whole country of Greece that is enormous we should stop that somehow because that makes no sense that consumption makes no sense internet, open free internet an academic internet would be great but why do we need 5G and bandwidth ok Marie I think you've been rising your hand so try and be brief in your intervention yes I just wanted to say that I agree with everything that Pedro has just said but I ask you to pay attention because the European Commission is talking about the two transitions there's the ecological transition and the digital transition but there is one that is vital and that could be very dangerous and that is a real political danger putting both at the same level and we shouldn't accept that ok thank you I don't know if George just wanted to say something and if not I will just continue with the next question Pilar and Carmen have a series of similar questions and now they're just down to the streets what would you tell the person who is not familiar with concepts such as decarbonizing the economy and how can that person that normal citizen have an influence so that we change this economic model we live in and what Carmen says as well in this case is that how are we going to work in practice for the system to change and what we are interested in the system to last still have so much power how can a normal citizen fight against this so that they can change this structure that seems unmovable unchangeable oh George just well I would say that to a person who is not familiar with these concepts I think that metaphors sometimes they work and a metaphor that everyone understands is that we have a current crisis the pandemic where everyone is trying to mobilize and there are lots of failures in the western world we don't have a country that has dealt with this crisis well and this is even easier than climate change so we understand that there is a crisis that is affecting us all and we have to change the way in which we work and we have changed the way we live and maybe in a way that is not good for many of us but we have to change on a daily basis I'm not against technology those of us who well in a pandemic we need a vaccine well with climate change we need renewable energies and we have to combine these two things the way in which we live we have to change the way in which we live and we have to change the way in which we reduce energy in the context of climate change and the good news is that for climate change we don't have to have any social distancing we don't need to stop going to school or stop going to bars or to stop kissing each other we can do all of those things without limits we can do that without limits we have to limit other things we have to limit trips, unnecessary trips we have to limit unnecessary consumption etc etc I think that now people in the streets understand this because we are all starting to understand that what happens nowadays is quite dramatic but it's not as dramatic as the pandemic and what will happen in 10 years it's not that far away with climate change everyone can see the fires everyone can see the droughts it's not that far away from people but it's true that there are people who are desperate and when people are desperate what will happen in 10 years will be will be quite serious so it's not that people who are desperate won't want to change the system but people who are desperate need solutions that work right now and in that context I am I am for proposals that could now make a difference so we have to invest in renewable energies to build the economy to create jobs and at the same time to change to change the economy and do it in a way that works and lobbies, not only lobbies but also crazy people we see that there are lots of crazy people people who deny that there is a pandemic or that there are dead people and unfortunately there are not just a few crazy people and with climate change we will have even more crazy people that are currently happening but they can't deny it, it could happen and they will just deny it well those people have to fight we have to convince those who who can be convinced and those who are crazy will see the way of taking them out of the game and always keep on working because there will always be people who will not be convinced thank you George and to end I would like to to briefly summarize what interests us all and what we want to find a balance to find a balance between social well-being and the environmental well-being as well and as for climate negationists I hope it were only people in the streets we also have people in government at the other side of the ocean who are also working in a very powerful way against the climate in a more powerful way than lobbyist so thank you so much thank you Giorgio, thank you Pedro, thank you Marie I think it was a very interesting debate all of you from your different angles, your different background have been very interesting there have been lots of questions people were very interested so I wanted to thank La Casa Antendida, the European Grand Foundation and the European Foundation thank you for inviting me to moderate this forum I've learned a lot and I wanted to remind you who are listening to us that on October 22nd this series of debates will continue we will have another debate we will be talking about the present and future of the agro food system and it will be at the same time as today and half past six so I invite you to connect once again because I'm sure that it will be at least as interesting as today's debate and with that I say goodbye to you and I hope to see you all soon thank you very much