 groups across this assessment report. The second part of what I wanted to talk about was how I personally engage with stakeholders in explaining the science and helping people to understand what the problem is and that they need to be part of the solution as well. So obviously part of my role as an IPCC scientist is contributing to these reports which directly inform the negotiations here and other cops. So many IPCC authors are part of the mandated sessions here where being working directly and being questioned by government delegations on the details of the science. So there's direct engagement between IPCC scientists and governments here at COP. I also work directly with the UK government in the Met Office. So we work with Bayes at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy who hold the climate portfolio and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which look after climate adaptation. So I work directly with those. So I do a lot with policymakers but I also do a lot with other groups as well. So I do many interviews on the mainstream media for example I'm frequently called upon to explain the climate connection like in the summer in the UK we had the hottest temperatures on record. We had 40 degrees Celsius for the first time ever in the UK on the 19th of July. I did a lot of interviews on the BBC making clear that that was in part due to climate change it would not have happened without climate change. So that's part of my engagement activity. I also work in social media a lot. I'm very active on Twitter, less active on Facebook and Instagram and other platforms but mainly on Twitter and I find that quite useful to engage with a whole range of people not just scientists but also people in civil society, NGOs, concerned citizens who often want to know is there still hope? Can we still solve the climate change issue? So I have a lot of discussions on social media in that way. I also do a lot of public talks. I really enjoy talking to say school groups, business groups, local communities and so on. I also speak at festivals. There's a music and science festival at the Jodrell Bank Observatory and Astronomy Centre in the UK which has a science festival. I speak at that but I also speak perhaps more usually at music festivals like the Glastonbury Festival. I've been there for the last three years. Most recently we actually had a science area within Glastonbury where lots of scientists, lots of science organisations had stalls with science activities and we had a little stage where we had science-based acts so people performing music, poetry and comedy on a science theme or people who in their day job were scientists who were performing music and so on. So that was another way of engaging with a different audience and we find actually that's quite good for getting to a whole very different set of the population. People who come to a public talk on climate change are already concerned but say if you want the Glastonbury Festival you can just catch passers-by who are on their way to watch a band or something and the stalls that are very good at public engagement they'll have activities which will draw people in and engage them and start conversations about science, not just climate science but any kind of science. The other I wanted to talk about was other scientists getting also engaging more in the arts so working with directly with musicians and poets and bands and so on and there's been a great performance. Some of my colleagues from the University of Exeter had a performance in Cairo last week in Turia Square which was performed both in English and Arabic which was telling some stories, some very personal stories about people being impacted by climate change and these are not climate science colleagues of mine. They're from arts departments within the University so a whole different area of academia engaging with the public and they brought that here to COP 27 and it's being performed in the green zone tomorrow late in the day I think about six o'clock maybe it's four o'clock but anyway this performance bringing together arts and science is really important and I think all this is a really great really important way of engaging with the public. People often don't respond to the facts they respond to emotions so if you can touch people in some other ways put touch them emotionally to get their feelings engaged that's a really good way of really getting to the heart of it and promoting more action on climate change which is what are urgently needed. I'll finish there thank you. Okay thank you very much Richard that was very very interesting. If I might just ask a question about your work clearly the IPCC reports and scientists like yourselves are doing a great job to raise awareness globally about climate change and the causes of climate change but to what extent do you think that raising awareness is translating into concrete action by people by governments and to what extent is do you think your reports and your scientific work is actually prescribing or leading to clear ideas as to the solutions themselves? I think it does make a difference through a variety of routes so for example the IPCC report on global warming 1.5 degrees which came out in 2018 that was obviously most directly aimed at policymakers and it did inform the UN process and other governments and actually some governments increased their ambition directly as a result of that the UK government for example increased its ambition to from reducing emissions to 80% down to net zero by the mid-century so the UK government directly responded to the IPCC report but also it informs I think it does help in other ways so the Fridays for Future movement Greta Thunberg's movement started directly after this IPCC 1.5 degree report it was a real it was the probably the most widely read scientific report I think so Fridays for Future started other groups and civil society extinction rebellion for example already existed but they up their messaging in response to the IPCC report but David Attenborough is quoting it on the BBC so it raises a lot more awareness and that then gives policymakers the mandate to be more ambitious if they can see the public are calling for it. Those are really great examples of how science and data can drive action. Do one of our other panelists want to ask Richard a question? Kirsty? Thanks Richard I think it's so important the work you're doing and thank you for you know obviously all the extra curricular work that you do to communicate about the importance of climate. We're here in the Atoms for Climate Pavilion I think it's the first time that the IAEA has had a pavilion here at the COP and you know over the last several years I've really seen an increasing sort of recognition and call to action for nuclear energy to be included in the discourse about action on climate change and I'm really interested in your perspective on that if you're seeing that as well and if you also are making the case when you're talking about the solutions that are available to us. So yes I am seeing that happening it's been talked about a lot more as you say personally speaking I think we need to throw everything at this problem. I don't like to rule anything out. I am actually a big fan of James Lovelock who's thought of the guy up on this is a good friend of mine the late dear departed Jim did a lot of work with him helped him with some of his earlier books. He was actually one of the sort of first environmental scientists to turn around and say actually we do need nuclear. He was quite radical in his time and he alienated a lot of the traditional greens in that way and he made a lot of us think actually perhaps we do need to rethink on this. So personally I think we need everything on the table at this point. Thank you. Thank you Professor Betz. Any other questions for him. Okay. So now we'll introduce our second speaker Murray Murray song Patricia Makututza comes from Lesotho as I said earlier she's a statistician she is deputy president of the African young generation in nuclear and and she's an energy planner. So Murray song it's over to you. Thank you. Thank you very much Jeff. So let me maybe just that saying Jesus this is a youth day and I would like to say happy youth day to all the youth out here in the pavilion and globally. So as Jeff has already mentioned I come from the statistics background and all the time you know you can't say no to facts data says a lot. So I am also the national lesson assistant in the Ministry of Energy and Meteorology and I would say for this topic of today we are saying clean energy and then for for for us to counter the effects of climate change we is the global mandate we are saying we transition in from fossil fuels to using clean energy in Lesotho where I come from we are 100% renewable in terms of production but that is that doesn't surface to meet all the demand of the country so we also import from South Africa and South Africa produces from coal and nuclear of course they are the first ones to have the nuclear reactor in the African continent so we we are saying as much as Lesotho has seen and has been using clean energy from the very first start and even the future plans are saying clean energy but then we are already seeing a shortfall in clean energies in the renewable energies because that's the only source of energy that we are using they are short there we can the current production cannot meet the demand that we have so we are already importing and we are importing and clean energy we don't have a voice to what kind of what source of energy should be used by the countries that we import from so in order for us to really fight climate change and contribute to the global call to fight climate change I think we need to have a mix that is reliable that is sustainable and that would mean bringing in nuclear into the energy mix so far there are no plans in Lesotho and I think that is the main idea behind us forming the national chapter for African for Lesotho young generation in nuclear to say that we want to really now go out into the streets of course into schools we can start from the grassroots and teach the children now that there is this new technology that has is packed with so many opportunities that can talk to economy that can talk to clean energy transition and then they will take it up as they grow and you know when you start from very small minds they they grow up with that and it never goes out and we will take it also to the streets and talk to the general public and hopefully the perception the wrong perceptions about nuclear will be changed in the in the meantime we also saying as young as youth we should also knock on the doors of the policymakers and unpack the facts around to mutilate and of course use data because you know I'm from the statistics background so data you should show facts and that is the only way you're gonna convince the policymakers that this is this some this is something that can really work so we will knock in the bathrooms and have our voice and this is something that we have already started as African young generation in clear we just reviewed our strategic plan this year and in in the strategic plan we saying like we are already saying start from the grassroots go to schools primary schools teach the children and then we'll take it from there and have a national from schools to national competitions where we will be raising awareness about clean energy and all the other the important sources that contribute to clean energy renewable we are not taking out renewables of course because they are part of the solution but we're saying also bring nuclear into the picture because it really is much more provides much more sustainable solutions and reliable solutions to the to the clean energy transition so in terms of advocacy we are also affiliated with the international I Y and C international youth nuclear Congress and we have an annual summit whereby we conference is a Congress it's a conference whereby we meet as a youth and we share research and experiences from different countries so we will we as a YGN we also have a by annual summit where we also call and promote research so that we have concrete information when we go to all this they call us difference they called us to promote nuclear we have informed research and informed data so we are taking it to a lower level and saying from I Y and C to to a YGN and down to the countries we should also have such a similar summits we will take it from the schools like I already mentioned and then we have national competitions and we will have our youth participating in that and I think also from the perspective of advocacy and communication I think first is important to capacitate the youth you cannot give out what you don't have so let's first have the skills get this the the youth to be capacitated in clear science and technology and all the clean energy technologies that are here to to bring solutions to countering climate change and then from there you know you are you have the confidence that if they are going out to advocate for these clean energy solutions they are going to pass out the right message so for me I think that is it thank you okay thank you very much Maresong that's that's very interesting I I didn't know that people in Lesotho were thinking about nuclear power as part of the mix I know that the there are many countries in Africa looking at nuclear the IAEA works with with many of them in helping to in helping to support their efforts to establish the the infrastructure for a nuclear power program but let me ask you when you when you're talking with and communicating with youth with even younger kids how do you explain to them that perhaps a system just with 100% renewables can't really fulfill the full needs of a country and and how do you how do you illustrate the role that nuclear in that mix can play for them in a way that they can understand and and sort of take it forward okay thank you very much thank let me first say we the country is not just as yet pronounced himself in terms of having nuclear power that's why I said we we established the national chapter for YGN so that we promote nuclear power and opportunities around nuclear energy and coming to the question I think the the youth can already see we are currently in Lesotho rolling out the what we call the electrification master plan and it promotes what we call off-crete mini-creets for all this rural areas that I cannot tap from the main creed and the tariff for mini-creets is a bit higher than what what the people in the urban areas are getting from in through the main creed and this itself is posing a problem because we are saying them this marginalized people who cannot afford they are getting power at a very high price as compared to those people that we're saying they are they have access to jobs and they can afford so that itself is saying there is a problem in the system yeah so do we do we have any other questions for Marison no okay thank you very much then at this point we're going to turn to our last speaker Kirstie Gogan who's quite well known in the clean energy world she's sort of a crusading campaigner to to to solve the energy the climate change challenge that we're facing I will I will leave it to you to maybe introduce yourself a little bit more and and and tell us your story thank you thanks Jeff and thanks for inviting me to contribute alongside these great you know speakers it's an honor to be here good afternoon everybody I'm Kirsty Gogan and the co-founder of Terra praxis which is a nonprofit developing really scalable solutions for some of our toughest to decarbonize parts of the economy and actually it's great that Richard really set the scene because you know we we we're facing a pretty bad situation we have 27 years to decarbonize the entire global energy infrastructure but then also probably double or even triple it to meet the kind of rising energy demand that's necessary to bring everybody's standards of living up to to have a good quality of life but also to establish resilience to the climate impacts that we're already experiencing and will continue to experience so you know those are the kind of core principles for for us it's really about decarbonization and increased energy access and today I'm going to talk to you about the kind of organizing principles for us and in how we communicate about the role that nuclear technology can play in contributing to these big challenges with a focus on two of the big unsolved sources of carbon emissions coal and liquid fuels now I'm sure you guys already know that coal contributes almost a third of our total global carbon emissions and despite the pledges that were made at COP26 to phase down coal or phase out coal or whatever it was coal has since been booming and broken records last year and is expected to break records again this year globally around the world and there's a reason for that it's because we need the energy so you know I'm going to tell you about some strategies that we're developing to get rid of the emissions but to continue supply and supplying clean reliable energy to communities that need it and that's really around the sort of the organizing principle of values alignment and secondly liquid fuels we use a hundred million barrels of oil per day right now okay that's keeping the whole global economy moving and we need to replace it somehow 27 years people to 2050 so those those are the strategies that we're developing to solve so the two kind of organizing principles that I'm going to talk about are firstly values based alignment as a kind of organizing principle for communications and secondly being really rigorous about the science around risk communication so what do I mean firstly by values based alignment so actually Richard you gave a great example when you talked about the way that you know James Lovelock who is you know an inspiring leader that you you know really respected you know said something kind of shocking to you that seemed to be like contradicting you know the sort of larger you know cultural identity that he would otherwise be you know part of as a sort of you know environmental leader he said by the way guys we need nuclear energy and you know so values based alignment really is around the idea that the messenger is as important as the message now the message is important to which I'll talk about another example is actually from cop 21 which was my first cop when I brought four of the world's leading climate scientists including James Hansen and Ken Caldera to to make a statement about the need for nuclear energy as a climate solution alongside renewables and our other clean energy sources and that you know created a sort of lot of cognitive dissonance for the climate movement at the time because James Hansen in particular was seen as like this godfather of climate change a real leader and to have him say something which was contradicting the world view within that within that culture was was very shocking but it forces people to sort of reconsider their position and I think that's that was the beginning of a big change also really importantly contributed to by the nuclear for climate movement that continues to this day that were you know really sort of shining a light on the contribution that nuclear is already making to our global clean energy system you know what does success look like from a climate perspective well it starts with a clean electricity grid and the countries around the world who've achieved that there's only a small number of modern industrialized economies that already have achieved success from a climate perspective in their electricity grids you know two of them have fortunate natural resources so Norway has hydro and Iceland has geothermal and hydro but the others Sweden and France and Brazil have achieved a clean electricity grid through a combination of nuclear renewables and so that was the beginning of you know the sort of values based alignment story that I think we started to tell as a community and I have to congratulate the IAEA for like being here with a pavilion this year it's it's fantastic it's awesome so you know I think we're really starting to to sort of you know evolve our communications in it in a positive way okay so I'm going to talk now about about the liquid fuels challenge my my business partner Eric Ingersoll and I together wrote a report called the missing link to a livable climate which we published back in September 2020 and this report was really about the value of nuclear energy for producing hydrogen-based synthetic fuels now these synthetic fuels could potentially if they're produced at a low enough cost and a large enough scale really start to make a dent in those hundred million barrels of oil that we currently use today to enable continued storage distribution transport and end-use infrastructure to continue operating keep the global economy moving but without the emissions and we were sending this draft report around to various you know eminent and distinguished people to peer review and we kept getting the same comments back wait a second nuclear energy is too expensive and nuclear energy is too complicated and nuclear energy takes too long to build and we were saying wait what but the way that we're proposing to deliver and deploy these nuclear technologies addresses all those issues but what we found was that there was a lot of preconceived ideas around the words that were kind of embedded in the word nuclear expensive and risky and slow and so we thought okay well we really are like not able to get the point across that we're trying to make here that if you deliver nuclear energy as a manufactured based product which is made in a factory or made in a world-class shipyard then you can achieve very low costs very high rates of deployment very large scale deployment and therefore get down to those one dollar a kilogram levels that you need for hydrogen production to be useful ingredient in clean synthetic fuels if you can do that then this technology is really useful but everybody's missing that story because there's a sort of preconceived idea when they encounter the word nuclear of an experience which is you know from the recent experience of building large nuclear plants in the United States and Europe so we start we stopped using the word and we started saying advanced heat sources instead because actually what we wanted to do was to shine a light on the attributes of the technology which is that the technology can produce power and heat and the heat by the way is really useful for increasing the efficiency lowering the cost and increasing the volume of the hydrogen production so that's great so power plus heat awesome high capacity factor so you know operating for like 90% or more of the time which means that any other capital investment that you make in your associated infrastructure like the electrolyzers for example you know you start to get great value out of that investment which lowers your costs further so power heat high capacity factor and then the last one is a really small environmental footprint and that's really really valuable because it means that you're not competing with wind and solar for space but actually you could deploy this stuff to many many locations without the requirement for good wind and solar resources or vast amounts of land so those were the attributes that we really wanted to shine a light on and those are the values the value proposition that nuclear technology was bringing to the table so that you know we published the report and you know it's been quite impactful I think as part of the kind of you know literature that has been published since then about the contribution that that nuclear technologies can make and the recognition that didn't exist before that frankly about nuclear for hydrogen production in the larger climate discourse and we're now you know being approached and working with all of the major oil producers and users because before this they were facing a choice between extinction or business as usual and neither of those choices are great choices for these oil producers and so the idea that there could be a path for these oil companies to become suppliers of emissions-free clean synthetic fuels at scale and leveraging their existing global capabilities and skills and infrastructure and storage and distribution and end-use customers you know why wouldn't we do that why wouldn't we enable those massive companies already operating at global scale to transition their operations to emissions-free alternatives in a way that doesn't require people to pay more fly less or change their behavior because all of those alternative strategies create risk that we will fail to address this existential risk that we face to humanity on this planet we have 27 years so we absolutely must repurpose as much existing infrastructure as possible and leverage the existing global capabilities as much as possible and I'll tell one more quick story before I close and that keep looking at Jeff in case I'm running over time here so the next story is about coal now I already mentioned you know almost a third of global carbon emissions and you know we're really not shutting down those plants and the reason for that is they're not just you know isolated emitters of carbon emissions that we can just sort of switch off without any consequences they're they're plants that sit in complex social political and economic ecosystems providing energy that's really needed by the people that use it and the utilities need to find a way of replacing somehow that energy without emissions and the alternatives that they're looking at are you know very impractical frankly so what we're looking at is developing a system to essentially replace the coal boiler with a new heat source which matches the footprint the performance the cost and the capacity factor of the existing plant enabling the workforce to continue operating those plants and the energy to continue being supplied to those consumers because there's other ways we're going to face massive opposition to these plants being shut down even in countries with old coal like the United States in Europe and Canada we see opposition to these coal plants being shut down because it's a devastating prospect for the communities the loss of jobs the loss of socioeconomic benefits and tax revenues in those communities is devastating so figuring out a way to go with the grain of the reality of the situation is absolutely key and you know this idea to deploy SMRs in a factory based product based repeat low-cost fast and repeatable method has started to attract the interest of massive global sustainability leaders now our organization is tiny we're funded by philanthropy it's really hard to raise money for for climate-based work that includes anything to do with nuclear energy the foundations are way behind on this they need to get better despite how small we are and despite our very small team and our very limited resources we somehow managed to attract the attention of massive global sustainability leaders like Microsoft some of you all have heard of this company I'm sure and Schneider Electric and the reason that they're interested in this is because they recognize that if we're successful this could be the largest carbon reduction opportunity on the planet and it gives them an opportunity to leverage and apply their incredible digital capability to solve one of these biggest problems so they're working with us to develop a platform that can enable coal plant owners to step through the whole development process in a way that is radically cheaper and faster than if they would try to do it in the conventional way and the fun interesting thing about that is that all of a sudden nuclear energy stops being like a thing associated with something of the past and a big cumbersome old you know complicated you know cathedral inside a cathedral and starts being something connected to digital AI you know what design automation and stuff that's really cool and interesting that lots of people want to participate in so all of a sudden we're in the tech space we're not anymore in the old-fashioned infrastructure space and so from a communications point of view that is enabling us to have really different kinds of conversations about the role of nuclear technologies to address our biggest decarbonization challenges so thank you very much thank thank you Kirsty as usual you have a lot going on and it's very fascinating you know listening to you it sounds like it sounds like nuclear is almost entering a new a new phase of development and it's not just you I mean we had here yesterday an event with DG Grossi where he interviewed Fatih Birol the head of the International Energy Agency I don't know if my microphone is working but and Fatih Birol said at the beginning of the event nuclear is in a strong comeback and of course he's not just saying that we anybody who reads the newspapers or watches TV has seen over the last few weeks the last few months many many countries stepping forward and renewing their interest announcing new projects and basically showing themselves ready to to take interest if not take action in in looking at or deploying nuclear power so I guess my question for you is we seem to be at a tipping point here with nuclear but to bring it back to the subject of this conversation communications stakeholder engagement despite all this good news there's still work to be done evidently what do you think is the one of a couple of you know the main challenge or the missing link what's the next level that we have to get to in terms of of that engagement and that communication to really get this over the finish line yeah so actually thanks for their chance to say one more thing because I forgot to say something that answers this question which is around risk communication so you know one of the issues we face with you know bringing nuclear into this conversation is people are you know perceived risks associated with it and the science of risk communication tells us that you know actually we do risky behavior all the time right but we do it if we perceive that there's been the benefits outweigh the risks so we get it aeroplanes we drive running cars we drink alcohol you know we do all kind of all kinds of risky behavior and we are constantly taking risks when we think that the benefits outweigh the risks now one of the things I think that we need to get better at is rather than offering nuclear technology in the abstract we need to really be defining very targeted applications for nuclear technology that are solving big decarbonization challenges and energy access challenges that are not already being solved elsewhere and I'm really you know happy to see in this pavilion for example lots of examples of this where we're seeing you know nuclear technology can can can complement wind and solar in a future electricity grid by offering firm dispatchable power to support renewables but it can also produce heat and decarbonizing heat is one of our biggest challenges that we can't easily solve with wind and solar we can't electrify heavy transport like marine and like shipping and aviation and we can't easily electrify industrial heat to produce steel and chemicals and glass and concrete so I think one of the big challenges we have is is is really defining the cost and performance requirements for for the technologies to meet and design for that to address those issues but the second big challenge that we have is absolutely Jeff you know what there is this like clamor now for nuclear with the Russian invasion of Ukraine we've seen you know many countries in Europe reach you know 80% or more public support for nuclear energy in Poland and Sweden and Finland all over Europe we're seeing you know a demand for nuclear and the politicians don't know how to respond to that demand quickly enough the real challenge that I think the industry faces right now is how can we deliver fast enough at low enough costs and at a large enough scale to meet the to meet the demand for this technology to address our energy security as well as our environmental and affordability needs great thank you very much Chrissy so we're getting towards the end of our event before we conclude I'd like to just maybe invite each of the speakers to make a brief brief concluding remark a brief concluding remark and then and then maybe we'll we'll wrap up for today so back to you professor professor Richard Betz thank you so actually I if I may I wanted to ask Kirsty a question which will lead into my computer remark because they well I'll start with my concluding remark which is really important to engage with people and listen to their concerns and have a two-way discussion with any kind of science if you don't want to impart your knowledge you want to hear what they already understand or misunderstand and what they're worried about and then respond to that so that's I think it's really important with engagement for all kinds of stakeholders my question to you is when that question you talked about risk of it a very common question is with what to do with the waste and the long-term nature of that what is your response to that you must get that question a lot yeah thanks great question so what about it it was my answer what about the waste it's it's we're really good at managing it it's never harmed anybody we store it incredibly you know incredibly well and you know it sits there and you know many countries now in the world are developing long-term repositories for the long-term storage of the spent fuel it's actually a very interesting that spent fuel declines in radio activity so it's one of the only examples of a toxic the toxic waste stream that becomes less toxic over time so you know I really I really think that this is an issue that's been really successfully overblown by anti-nuclear groups and it's distracted us from the waste streams that we really should be worried about like you know the air pollution from fossil fuels that's causing seven million premature deaths per year and that includes indoor air pollution which mainly impacts women and children who are in living in households without access to electricity and the women not only are spending up to 35 hours a week you know collecting fuel like wood and dung to burn in their home but they're then they're exposed to the you know toxic smoke when they burn it so those that's the way stream that I'm worried about and then I think we should be focused on addressing and you know count on the you know continued very highly regulated very high quality very high performance management of the spent fuel and hopefully you know one day will also start recycling it oh well I guess the other part of my conclusion is just to remind everyone of the urgency of the issue climate change is it's still ongoing and we're not on track anywhere near to meet the Paris targets so we need to be reducing emissions rapidly starting now but we also need to be adapting to the changes that are already put in place so we need urgent action on both these things okay thank you very much I think I would say global warming is really becoming a threat to the next generation so we should really concentrate efforts and advocate for an inclusive clean energy transition shouldn't leave other sources behind so net zero really needs nuclear thank you one thing that we can learn from the COVID pandemic is that we called it an emergency a global emergency and then we acted like it was an emergency and we brought the you know development timeline for the vaccine down from what would typically take 10 years to 10 months to bring that vaccine to market globally we call the climate emergency an emergency and we need to start acting like it great well thank I'd like to thank each and every one of our speakers today for an excellent conversation we've heard about the the climate science underpinning the need for action from Professor Betz we've heard about the rising need for energy and clean energy in many parts of the world including Africa from Marisong and we've heard about the new and exciting ways that nuclear energy can be used for very specific first purposes including to decarbonize industry from from from Kirsty so I'd like to thank them all and thank you all for coming here today on behalf of the IEA have a very nice day thank you