 Very happy to welcome you today to the launch of our first SDSN Europe report on the transformations for the joint implementation of the European Green Deal and the SDGs towards a green digital fair future for Europe. This is the first report of SDSN Europe that has been launched a few weeks ago. And what we are trying to do here is with over 300 members and 13 national and regional networks of SDSN. We are trying to align the European recovery with agenda 2030. This is our mission and we are leveraging the research within these networks, but also SDSN work on the six transformations to which I will be referring in the next slides. In order to play an active role in shaping a sustainable and resilient Europe, in shaping the future that we want. So this is the report that I said before on the transformations that are needed for the joint implementation of agenda 2030 for sustainable development and the European Green Deal. And we are focusing on a green digital job-based inclusive recovery from COVID-19 pandemic. This is a report that was co-written by the senior working group of the SDSN network that focuses on the implementation of the European Green Deal. And our aim is to help this implementation and make this implementation consistent with the global agenda, the agenda, the UN agenda 2030. Participants in this team are president of UN SDSN, FIM, Pandia Sione, Enrico Matei, and the former CEO, Paolo Garnevale, the Carlo Papa, the chief executive manager of NS Foundation, Laura Coszi from the International Energy Agency, Mariana Machicato from University College London, and Leonardo Pecetic from the University of Roma. I thank them all and I appreciate their contribution together with their teams. As you can see, many people have worked for a year for this report and we truly hope that it will be useful. The main messages of the report. First, we have a moral responsibility to build for what better, not back, for what better. The COVID-19 pandemic related to recovery packages are financed by national debt. So in effect, they are loans from future generations. So we all to think about future generations when we are spending this money. And the good news is that we don't only have a moral responsibility, we have an economic case for building for what better. Recent simulations of the effect of green recovery plans confirm that the green economic stimulus is more growth enhancing than a return to normal stimulus. And merely boosting current and sustainable consumption production partners will not help us recover economic growth. It's called stimulus that it is expected to boost aggregate demand. This crisis calls for transformative public investments. So this report connects four major policy initiatives, the SDGs, the European Green Deal, the European semester process, and the EU recovery plans. And what we try to do is connect them and provide the policymakers, the businesses, the financial institutions, the civil society with actionable strategies that can guide a sustainable recovery. And of course, we have our policy framework, which is very helpful. We have a load in our hands, and we can move fast. We have the SDGs, as I said before. We have the European Green Deal. We have the new 1.5 targets for the ambition with regards to limiting global temperature. We have the six transformation pathways that have been launched in 2019 by UN-SDSN. And these refer to transformations that need to be implemented in order to be able to consistently and consistently with the structure of governments be able to implement Agenda 2030. We need transformations in education, health, energy, decarbonization, sustainable food, land, water, and oceans, sustainable cities and communities, and the digital revolution for sustainable development. And of course, this is a mirrored in the European Green Deal. The growth strategy of Europe with full main access become climate neutral by 2050, protect human life, animals and plants by cutting pollution, help companies become world leaders in clean products and technologies, and leave no one behind. The European Green Deal is supported by the European Climate Law and the European Climate Act, and it is also supported by a budget of almost one trillion, which combines the EU budget and money to be leveraged by private and public partnerships. And of course, the whole European process is also guided by the European semester process, which is crucial to streamline with the policies of the European Green Deal and also with the SDGs. We know that in 2020, we came up with the Enhanced MFF and the EU Next Generation Instrument in order to help recovery and the recovery and resilience facility amounts to up to 672.5 billion to help Europe recover in a climate and digital mainstream way. It is important that the recovery and resilience strategy is consistent with the European Green Deal. We did not leave. We did not forget about the sustainable growth strategy once we had this pandemic. This unprecedented shock did not make Europe lose or diminish the ambition that we had. The recovery and resilience plan has to be spent with minimum 37% of climate-related expenditure and each measure needs to respect the do-know-significant harm principle. And at the same time, 20% of it is digital-related expenditure. This is important and this is a milestone for me, at least for me, for Europe as a whole. And the flagships that govern these recovery and resilience plans are power-up, renovated, recharging, refuel, connect, modernize, scale-up, reskill and upskill. And of course, we also have the announcement by member state leaders just before the end of 2020 that we are increasing our ambition with regards to emissions to 55% reduction by 2030, reduction compared to 1919 levels. So all this is there to help us mobilize the implementation of the European Green Deal and the SDGs. Our approach tries to connect, as I said before, the SDGs, the European Green Deal and the European semester process. We start with a textual analysis of the European Green Deal and we cross map textually with regards to the used words, the European Green Deal policies and the SDGs. Then we use the UN Sustainable Development Report in order to identify country-specific performance with regards to the SDGs. And we use the recommendations of the European semester process in order to cross map the country-specific recommendation and the SDGs. That is to answer the question, do the country-specific recommendations derived from the semester process address the challenges that are identified in the Sustainable Development Report address the challenges with regards to country-specific SDG performance? Then we put the cross mapping of the European Green Deal and SDGs and the SDR country-specific challenges addressed by the country-specific recommendation into a common framework in order to identify priority European Green Deal policies for each and every country. And then we suggest transformation, portfolios of investments and policy reports for each and every country in order to meet these challenges. Then we propose an assessment methodology and multi-criteria inclusive and interactive with stakeholders assessment methodology for the different interventions in order to help us build the recovery and resilient plans in a very inclusive and interactive with stakeholders way and also distribute the available budget from the recovery and resilience plans. The good news is that the European Green Deal, the nine policies protect biodiversity, farm to folks, sustainable agriculture, clean energy, sustainable industry, building and renovating sustainable mobility, eliminating pollution, climate action is mirror images of the 17 SDGs. In the dark spaces, dark green spaces, you see where there is explicit reference in the European Green Deal text to SDG targets and in the light green, you see implicit reference in European Green Deal text to SDG's target. You see that you have only a few white places where there is no cross mapping and this allows me to say that the SDGs and the European Green Deal are mirror images. We should understand this and we should not be thinking that we have two different agendas, two different possible implementation plans and that we are overwhelmed with commitments, national commitments with regards to the way forward with regards to growth. Then we are bringing in, as I said before, the country specific recommendations of the semester process. These recommendations are address fiscal policies supporting recovery and health, investment, green and digital transition, improved taxation, social policies, education and skills, finance and banking, public administration, labor market policies and others. And here I showcase just three countries, Sweden's that comes out as the best country with regards to performance against the SDGs. And you can see here that if you cross map the country specific recommendations of address to Sweden and with the SDG challenges, we see only 50% efficiency. So there is room for increased address, an increase in the effort for addressing the SDG performance, the effort invested in implementing the SDGs in the recommendations of the European semester process. The European semester process as far as Sweden is concerned can better align with the SDGs challenges at a percentage 50%. With the Germany the percentage is 63%. So although Germany has more significant challenges with regards to SDG performance, the country specific recommendations directed to Germany are better aligned with the SDG performance. And another country just because it comes from the heart, Greece, the country I live in and work has an 80% alignment between SDG performance and country specific recommendation. Of course, among the three countries that I've shown here, we are the worst I would say with regards to the implementation of the SDGs, which means we need to try more. You can see a detailed analysis of each and every of the 27 countries in the report with all the details very well articulated. With regards to generally results is that country specific recommendations efficiently address the challenges identified in the sustainable development report and the implementation performance of the SDGs. But there is still space for further alignment between country specific recommendations and SDG. And this phase is 30% additional alignment is possible. Also, it is quite interesting to see the prioritization that derives from this triple 3D cross mapping between European Green Deal, the SDGs and the country specific recommendations that allows us to derive the priority European Green Deal policies for each European country. For most of the countries, the priority policies are farmed to folk, sustainable industry, elimination pollution and climate action. The second part of the report focuses on technological and investment pathways and is based on a report produced by FIM on the roadmap to 2050, which produces a manual for nations to be carbonized by 2050. We know that in order to achieve the increased emission reduction of 55%, we need an increase in investment of 350 billion per year compared to previous decades and we need help policy makers and other stakeholders need help in order to prioritize and co-design these investment pathways where to invest this 350 billion. And in our report, we specify that EU climate neutrality by 2050 applies a deep transformation of power, industry, transport and building sectors. And we need to construct explicit technology pathways regulated by sound policy framework. So with regards to power, we need a progressive phase out of traditional sources and mix of renewable energy solutions with regards to industry, we need to focus on hard to abate segments like cement, iron, steel and petrochemicals with regards to transport, we need to focus on roadways, railways, railways and navigation and with regards to building, we need to retrofit and renovate. And of course, special focus in our report is placed on a circular economy action plan that is supported by the European circular economy stakeholder platform and various types of nature based solutions. The third section focuses on the role of sustainable patient finance for European recovery and it identifies transformations for fiscal policy, the financial sector and businesses. Since the 1980s governments were supposed to intervene only for the purpose of fixing market failures. Now we are asking governments to make significant long-term investments to support rapid recovery from the coronavirus shocks. Businesses, we know they do not invest unless they see an opportunity for growth. So turning mitigation into opportunities for investment and innovation is key. All that is said in this report is based on a UCL report that exactly focuses on how we need to transform the fiscal sector, the financial sector and the business sector in order to produce sustainable innovation. And the main claim is that we require patient long-term strategic finance. At the macro level, we need to reconceptualize financial stability and the mission of central banks to include climate and environmental degradation risk. And at the meso level, we need national public investment organizations to provide positive sources of long-term patient finance which support sustainable investing. For example, the European investment bank and the European investment fund have the expertise and scale to set direction in deploying equity type financial instruments, complementary to loans and guarantees. And this is important for businesses that are increasingly in depth in the crisis. And then NL Foundation comes into further details sustainable finance for financial institutions and for companies with regards to ESG criteria. What we are suggesting here is that at the moment, corporate lenders, investors and analysts today deal with two separate and disconnected reporting systems, a financial system and an ESG system, Environmental Social Governance Performance System. The results is that they have two different narratives, one telling how profitable the company is and the other highlighting whether what the company does is good for the people and the planet. What we suggest here is that we should work on the possibility of a single hybrid measure system that combines social and environmental impact with standard measures of financial performance. And all these needs to be integrated in the general EU taxonomy. This classification system for sustainable economic activities which has been launched in 2019. And recently the commission is working on translating the system into financial rules. And it is important the EU taxonomy is important because it creates a common language for investors and lenders and scales up private and public investments to finance the transition to climate, neutral and green economy. And of course we focus on measuring the effect of sustainability transition on jobs and skills. And we also focus on equity considerations because the transition has to be a fair and inclusive and leave no one behind. Investments in line with the European Green Deal can lead to approximately one million new jobs in energy and energy related sectors by 2030. Short-term jobs concentrated in existing programs that can mobilize money quickly. And also long-term higher investments will be possible in the power sector projects and also manufacturing on new efficient and low-carbon vehicles and industrial processes. We should know that most new jobs created in Europe will be highly skilled positions. So we require substantial training, upskilling and reskilling. And one third of new jobs will require moderate retraining. In addition to the creation of jobs what is also crucial and this is again a contribution for Enel Foundation where as the jobs creation multipliers are contributions from the International Energy Agency. Enel Foundation studied the distributional effects of key EU climate policies until 2050 and identify a package of measures to mitigate the aggressive effects. And these are mainly distributing revenues through long-term transfers, implementing targeted energy efficiency measures, long-term job retraining programs and funding of subsidies for new low-carbon technologies via general taxation and combined mitigation policies like this can assure more equality and increase GDP and employment. So mitigating the negative social impacts of climate policies is essential to ensure a broad support for the energy transition and aggressive effects can be fully offset with targeted policies. And the genie coefficients are expected to be reduced in all regions of Europe and mostly in South and Europe which is one of the most difficult areas, more troubled areas. The seventh section of our report and I'm very close to finishing is identify how we can move from strategic priorities to sector-specific policies, how we can co-design and implement country-specific recovery and resilience plans. And here we suggest SDG links sustainability multi-criteria assessments that are involving all the relevant stakeholders, the politicians, the policymakers, the businesses, the financial sector, the NGOs, the civil society so as to achieve increased social energy for the green transition and genuine stakeholder participation. This is a multi-criteria methodology that allows the politicians to move fast. Politicians need to move fast now, faster than they ever did. So we try to give them a solution frameworks for constructing the recovery plans and we identify the environmental impact of each investment suggested in the recovery and resilience plan, how it can be measured and how it relates to the SDGs and we do the same for economic and social impact with regards to economic multipliers produce jobs, skills produce, energy security, research and innovation and so on. And we focus and make it our job that this comes out explicitly and loudly that we need a very systemic transformation that includes all the stakeholders. We need what we call systems innovation which can be understood as a combination of systems thinking and the process of innovation so as to enable transformative change within complex systems. We need to enable transformative change that will allow the acceleration that we need in order to meet the 2030 goals. We have the technologies, we have the money, we don't have the time, we need to move fast. So a return to normal economy stimulus is environmentally unsustainable and economically inferior to a green stimulus. We have a once in a generation opportunity to direct economic growth based on the European Green Deal and the SDGs which luckily but not by accident but by construction are the two sides of the same coin and we should focus on transformations based on the SDGs and the European Green Deal for the transition to a green digital job-based and inclusive recovery from COVID. So this is a very rapid summary of all we had in this report but what we will do now is call in the institutions that contributed to this report to give us a bit more detail on different sections and make the recommendations of the report more explicit. For this reason, I would like to call Philip Ford, the Sari from FIM to open his camera then Martha McPherson from UCL, Carlo Baba from NL Foundation and Theodor Zarachariadis from the Cyprus Institute and SDSN Euro. Hello to everybody. I'm extremely happy to have you with us and I will start with Philip Ford if you allow me and ask him to give us an overview of the roadmap to 2050 and identify the key inputs for the drafting and the applied methodology and the key messages delivered. What are our pathways to 2050 climate in trial? Yes, Phoebe, thank you very much for giving me the floor and good morning, good afternoon and good evening to everyone. Just a recap on the report from D'Azioni Enricomattei and UNSDSN partnered in 2019 in a joint effort to investigate technology roadmap for the transition to their mission of four sectors who already mentioned power industry transport and buildings. The key input was to provide a technical guide to be intended as a compass for policy makers to design and foster the implementation of the carbonization pathways relying on available technologies. For this reason, we launched an international workshop attended by more than 70 experts who discuss other solutions for sectoral decarbonization and the workshop was followed by an extensive consultation among more than 100 experts. So the result of the effort is the report, the roadmap to 2050 report that is really a technical toolkit for policy makers for adoption and implementation of the carbonization pathways at all scales, local, national and the regional. We examine technologies, regulatory policies, economic reasons to be implemented in the pathways. Just want to underline some points and not the results because you can find but the approach for instance, the report has a high aspirations, the analysis simultaneously addresses multiple objectives, promoted policy instruments and technological solution that can be used across sectors, all the four sectors. So we have a systemic, inclusive and flexible approach. Another focal point concerning the approach regards the interconnectivity of action towards any one or more of those objectives. We are convinced and still we are that an action in one sector can be detrimental to another while some combined efforts could amplify the cumulative effects and achieve multiple objects. So as you mentioned, flexible and systemic is fundamental. At the base of the six pillars for decarbonization that we identified there must be a common ground not to be taken for granted. In fact, three more elements must be considered. The first is that development of comprehensive climate policy will depend on specific geographical and social context. Flexible and innovation regulatory frameworks are pivotal to address the challenge and substantial efforts must be made to allocate consistent investment in technological research and development. Let me add something more on enablers that we identified during the drafting on the roadmap. The first is cost competitiveness of technologies and their development that surely represent a cross-cutting enabler. The second one is fair competition that is enabler among all the sectors as difference in regulation and incentives between countries, regions and even jurisdiction within the same countries can cause a competitive distortion. Decarbonizing the power sector represent the precondition of course to reach a full decarbonization of other segments due to the strong cross-sector interaction. Lastly, maximization of production of renewable energy is the key of the process. Of course, Filippo, I would like to, because this is a report, the SDSN Europe report is a very case study-driven report with multiple examples of implementation, successful implementation of the methodologies and approaches that we propose. And Fim presents a case that regarding the medium-term impact of COVID-19 on Italian energy. Can you give us a quick snapshot of that as well? Yeah, sure, very quick snapshot. We started a medium-term impact of COVID on the Italian energy system actually. The main object is to phase medium-term, so let's say 5, 10 years in order to evaluate the potential impacts of the pandemic on energy system. The model is based on version of three main drivers. One is GDP evolution. Then we have future green investment, linked to the incentives provided by the European Union. And finally, the role of user behavior and habits with regards to mobility choices mostly. So I don't want to go too much in detail, but the point is that preliminary results show a decrease of the emission in all the different scenarios. We have three different scenarios, accordingly with how far we go with this situation. Let's say that in the worst-case scenario, to 2030, we have a 10% decrease versus the business scenario. Decrease that is mainly due to the industry sector, which is minus 22% in transport sector. The work is still in progress as it is the pandemic, unfortunately. But we have three preliminary results that we can share. Economic resources dedicated to green investment again need to be monitored in order to ensure the use for the set targets. So use well the money. Innovative and digital technologies are needed to support economic recovery. We learned it in the past year, more and more. And as a regard of passenger transport, we have to limit the increase of private cars, both with model mobility, both with support active mobility with tangible policy needs also. So three simple results. The methodology may be applied and replicable for any other European countries or for European Union as a whole. Excellent. Thank you very much, Filippo. Thank you. Martha. Martha MacPherson from UCL, Head of Green Economy, Institute for Innovation and Public Person. Martha, what is the role of patient finance in the systemic transformation we present in this report? Hi, Phoebe. Hi, everyone. Thank you. It's good to be here speaking with all of you. So yeah, I'll lay out a little bit of the thinking about the role of patient finance that we present in the report. This is the concept of long-term, stable risk welcoming finance, which is the characteristics of finance needed for sustainable innovation and sustainable investment. And this is a kind of part of a piece of work that we've been thinking about for a long time, the concept of patient finance, how this plays out in the public and the private spheres. But delivering this economic message of long-termism, of being patient is particularly difficult right now at the time of the kind of collision of green investment with the COVID crisis, which suddenly makes everyone want to go very, very fast, making investments quickly to prop up different parts of the economy that are suddenly in huge need of liquidity. So there's a real need to avoid only reacting to the kind of tyranny of the urgent, the magnitude of the crisis, the magnitude, the financial magnitude of the response that's being taken right now, means that actions, decision-making actions really do need to be scrutinized as part of a long-term consequence kind of timeline. These are multiple generation impacts. What's being invested in now will have impacts 10 years, 15 years down the line. So the kind of patient finance workstream is built on IIPPs, the Institute for Innovation and Public Purposes work over the last three years, and that of our director, Marianna Mazzucato, for many years before this, before the institute was kind of founded. And from what we call practice-based theorizing, working closely with government, with public organizations from around the world. And we start essentially in the report from the fact that economies, economic growth has a direction, as well as a rate that having a direction, not just measuring how fast an economy is growing, but where it's going to, means that we have an inherent political choice of which direction. And the pandemic has really shone a light on the need for governments around the world to actively consider that direction as it aims to build forward better, not just build back the same or build back worse. And these are all kind of concepts that are coming into view. And underlying that, this concept that you need an economic direction is the fact that finance itself is not a neutral actor. Finance isn't just there to fund and then see what happens afterwards. Characteristics of finance, of financial actors, of vehicles and of methods, affects the outcomes of investments made. So the type of finance you put in affects the positive or negative types of innovation you get out. And the private financial sector, due to how it's structured, often tends towards short-termists, quite risk-averse approaches, that often can result in latter stage investment within the innovation chain. So taking on a relatively narrow portfolio of lower risk investments, only once future returns are secure. So what we do in the paper is kind of explore this to some degree and then set out the store, not just for finance, but for the public financial ecosystem to build in this patient direction. Developing on what we've done to understand basically how this can be done within three different levels of financial institution that Phoebe outlined before. So mapping this out in a framework that's adapted to finance at macro level, at meso level and at micro level. All these different types of financial institution and player is our in abundance in the European ecosystem. So I'll quickly explain the three and then we can talk about kind of where this actually happens. So firstly in the report we set out, how do you set out a conducive macro economic framework for investment? And this is key. And this comes to the role of central banks of macroeconomic and macro prudential policy. And central banks have played an increasingly interventionist role since 2008 in our economies. But actually this has not coincided necessarily with a hugely significant adjustment of their policies in support of financing growth in the direction of the SDGs. For example, financing zero carbon transitions. But this is really kind of being exploded recently. There's been a lot of research and policy analysis by those inside central banks, by those advocating outside of central banks for central banks to take on more of an interventionist role in this field and a growing acceptance by people like Aswell Schnabel, Christine Lagarde that the kind of market mirror or market neutrality role being played by central banks just reflecting back the market is not feasible or realistic as a remit for central banks in the kind of climate and COVID world that we see made up of market failures. So that's kind of how we unpick what central banks should do. And you can see on the slide, we've kind of done some advocating around this. Secondly, at what we call the MESO level, so the interstitial level, what is the role of national public investment organisations? So including national investment banks, infrastructure banks, things that are being explored in the UK right now, national promotional banks, regulators and so on to provide positive sources of long-term patient finance. And these are lots of new organisations like this and lots of long-term organisations like this are developing into a good place to start supporting or continue supporting sustainable investment. The mandates, and as we've described them at IPP, the missions of financial institutions are already changing and shifting. So our recommendation is that we need to support and kind of enable these organisations to go further, to go faster and to understand patient finance as linked both to climate and to COVID recovery and renewal. And then finally, we take some time to explore at the micro level. So this is what firms are doing. We know that firms are suffering individually, we know that sectors are suffering individually within the COVID crisis, but we've also framed up how important it is that this is taken on a systems level. And we recommend looking to industrial strategy, looking to innovation strategy at national and at EU level as a market framing device and a market shaping device in the direction of our big societal challenges that the SDGs recognise. And so we investigate, oh, sorry, can I just finish by sentence quickly? Yes, please, please. Sure. We investigate the role of a conditionalities at firm level and support firm to kind of take this journey themselves. And that's the kind of three levels that we get to. Yes, and in one minute, Martha, give us one case study. One example of implementation, successful implementation, we have quite a few in the report. Absolutely, yeah. You can dive into the report for more, but the one that I'll share with you now is what you can see on the far left of the slide being shown. There's the development of a new investment, national investment bank in Scotland that's very much linked to the SDGs that has the SDGs as their national performance framework for the whole of Scotland. So over the past couple of years, Scotland has been designing and planning for a long-term patient finance provision vehicle or kind of institution. And we at IIPP worked closely with the First Minister and with the government to write the blueprint for this Scottish National Investment Bank. And the missions that are underpinning this bank are around zero carbon economy, around place-based transition and around demographic change. So setting out an investment vehicle, investment institution that really does take on these big missions. And this was formally launched at the end of November last year. So it's very much on its early stages journey and it's definitely something to watch and follow as it develops. Thank you so much, Martha. It's really enlightening to see that things are changing and moving forward. Now I have the pleasure of calling in Carlo Bafa managing the Erector of Enel Foundation. And basically I want to ask him about sustainable finance how that should be framed for financial institutions and how ESG criteria for companies should be a part of a hybrid model which combines not just ESG criteria but also the profitability of companies in one narrative. This was a very clever, very useful idea that Enel Foundation brought in the picture and I think it will have a major impact. Carlo, please. So Pibi, thank you very much and thank you for all for spending this afternoon with us. And thanks for the question. As I think that what we call hybrid metrics it's just a step of a journey that as you correctly say started 20 years ago where companies started to do the environmental assessment of their business. Now we are at a stage in which those financial metrics and ESG metrics at large are living in a parallel world and the effort is to try to connect which is the value created from shareholder as you all know with the value that we can define using the words of our good friends at Harvard the shared value for society in and around the company. So this journey is just a journey and we see good signal thanks to the taxonomy thanks to the regulation for financial institution but if you wish me to share a little secret we can say that the journey will be completed once on the Bloomberg screen or any screen that analysts use every day to allocate our money from pension funds, our savings and in general the money from government once we will have ESG performance indication specifically on financial screen on financial expert that would be the end of the journey. So that would be the point in which we clearly realize that measuring the impact on people and planet for ensuring a sustainable prosperity for all has reached this goal. So that would be as you correctly say one single narrative and as I say we're seeing already good signs. I mean, we have company that are playing very carefully and walking the talk sustainable finance game. There's another bunch of companies that are just enjoying name tag but what is releasing more important is that we have seen last year 2020 despite the COVID crisis ESG funds investment growing dramatically all over the world. So the direction is right and I think we should not forget something that is like a great corner at this very moment is not only for companies to use hybrid metrics to measure their impact on people and planet and prosperity, but it's also about government and if there is anyone in the audience that want to take this offline we are about to release a work for the Italian export agency in which we changed for the first time since GDP was invented the way you measure risks and opportunity for countries. So as of today, there are no models out there that consider into the risks metrics the climate change risks, the wealth distribution must distribute wealth in a very harmonious and homogeneous way and third to considering the energy transition as an opportunity for moving I had in the climate fight and ensuring a wealth distribution that is homogeneous. So again, it's a journey. I think we should all cooperate and if there is anyone in your audience that wish to cooperate in bringing this forward either a company level or a country level we are more than happy to do so. Excellent and do you want to give us a snapshot of the equity considerations analysis that we incorporated in this report how we can make our climate policies progressive, how we can mitigate the regressive effects which is important for fairness and social cohesion. Definitely, as you say, I mean equity should be the compass to address all the activities that we do in the policy making in the business. So allow me to steal the words of Italian Prime Ministry yesterday when he presented the new government at the Senate and luckily he got an all-devotation right. He was saying remind all of us that fiscal policy is just a part of the task the government should take or institution should take into consideration because there are also structural policy i.e. pushing ahead with the innovation and education for example and there are financial policies so allow people to access capital and credit in a good way. Finally, there is a sure monetary and fiscal policy that should facilitate investment and create demands. I think when we call about progressive and regressive we should forget for a moment what we have learned at university there is no white and dark white and black in what has been implemented as of today. So first of all, it's not stated that all the climate policy have a regressive effect at large because there is a mix of progressive and regressive effect. The second things that we didn't learn at university probably at least me is to measure the impact at large. So if you see for example the policy that are pushing for more renewable in the mix or more sustainable mobility most of the time we see analysts not to considering the impact on health and it's not only public health we are talking about the impact on the health of Carlo or PB that should be taken into consideration. So should be seen, I mean the entire pictures. And so I mean it's clearly that if we look at situation like energy efficiency measure and we push for more energy efficiency measure we can have our policy become more progressive but I invite all of our audience to look at measuring in a comprehensive way which is the impact on real people of real policy making. And then I mean as a point of governance before finishing it's about all this different policies structural financial and monetary and fiscal should be seen as an entire thing. So otherwise we find in institution very complex like the European Union or any government which is governing our country. We see bits and pieces of policy that one times are called progressive another regressive but since I mean the citizens of Europe are one person, one family we should look at the entire package in a very coherence and consistent way having in mind equality is not a theory. We have the Gini index, we have wealth distribution index that can precisely tell us how important it is looking in an harmonic way at this policy. So thank you very much. Thank you very much Carlo. I'm moving now to Theodoros Zahariadis from Cyprus Institute and member of the scientific community of European Environment Agency as well as DSN Europe Management. See, in all crisis timing is critical post pandemic fissure than anything has. Policy makers need a decision so they need guidance to steer between health protection, economic relief and climate resilience. Give us the framework, give us the multi criteria a framework which can enable them to make fast and correct decisions towards sustainability. Thank you Fabio, good afternoon and good morning to everyone. You are right, decision makers need to take decisions fast right now. So they need to take fast decisions for health and economic relief and would appreciate practical guidance both in the design of recovery packages and also in their assessment. What guides us to a large extent in the report which is reflected in the report that you have presented today of course is let me borrow a term from the European Environment Agency saying that we need to enable the transition to a sustainable Europe through trusted and actionable knowledge for informed decision making. So these three terms are very important and one should not come to the cost of another. Timing is critical, it shouldn't take years to propose recovery packages that are perfect so trusted knowledge should not come at a cost to actionable knowledge. So with regards to promote, proposing recovery packages, I strongly believe that in order to be useful to the policy makers we need a balance between measures that are familiar to them and measures that are visionary and induce transformative spending and reforms as you said in your presentation. If we focus on visionary reforms only say zero waste in 10 years time, we risk missing the trust of policy makers as they may consider this as unrealistic in today's social circumstances. But if we stay at the measures that policy makers fully understand then we may miss the opportunity to enable the transition. And that's why we need a balance between trusted and actionable knowledge. So we have to start from existing plans. For example, the national energy and climate plans that each EU member state has prepared the national strategies for biodiversity or for waste prevention and so on because policy makers have worked on these plans and to a large extent have gained experience in what works and what not. This is an important ingredient of a recovery package but it is not enough. Having gained the trust of policy makers then we have to move forward and include measures, reforms, investments that are indeed transformative. For example, transformations in the agricultural food system, nature-based solutions, visionary approaches towards a circular economy, sustainable mobility beyond merely technological solutions such as electricity of the fleet. So that's about the designing of the packages and this is reflected in our approach. With regard now to assessing the individual investments and reforms, as you have shown in one of your slides, our report proposes a set of sustainability and resilience criteria, partly different for the short and the long term against which policy makers can assess each proposed investment and reform of a package. Some of these criteria can be assessed through specialized economic or environmental models. However, informed decision-making, the term that I used at the beginning, certainly needs models but goes beyond them. It requires an active involvement of diverse stakeholders, trade unions, business representatives and associations, civil society organizations, each one with their own concerns, their own priorities, their own views of what works and what not, what is more equitable and what risks jeopardizing social cohesion. So we need an inclusive consultation process informed by expert knowledge and models but not limited to this expert knowledge. And this needs to take place in the European context in the coming months to ensure that the recovery and resilience plans that will be agreed by Member States and the European Commission can indeed have the transformative effect we desire for Europe's sustainability. Thank you Theo, very nicely said and explained. Thank you very much. I would like now to call Leonardo Pecetti, Professor of the University of Rome and member of our senior working group just to quickly present our forthcoming work on sustainable of finance under the umbrella of the Italian presidency of G20. Leo. Thank you Fibia, hello to everyone. I'm happy to be with you. The point is that Italy is organizing the G20 this year as you may know and the G20 is prepared at the beginning with an issue note. The issue note is agreed among the 20 countries and we have two issue note or climate and energy and the issue note basically states the state of art and proposes some outcomes that the G20 members commit to prepare as a final document. And in this outcome that we prepared that had been approved as you mentioned at the beginning we have several important items. First one is to share green finance best practice around the G20 countries in order to draft a book of best practice for communication and dissemination purposes. Then a very important problem of indicators takes stock of a grid matrix, sustainability threshold and fee for purpose indicators at G20 level because now indicators will be crucial for several policies related to ecological transition. The third point is a G20 sustainable finance hub as a place to exchange mechanism and views and experiences at institutional and scientific level. And finally, a very important policy issue looking at proposals to phase out harmful subsist including the compensatory measure. As we know, the real problem is the yellow vest risk. I mean, what is the reaction of the losers? So it's very important to go around the world and to see how the different countries have tackled with this problem. So these are the four main items. And I'm happy that as a contact person for Italy in the G20 as an expert in the team, preparing it that we can involve the group, our group to give a contribution to develop these items that in the end will be approved by the G20 members. As you know, these notes are important because they keep on influencing also the future parts of policies. So I think it would be a fascinating work to do together. Thank you very much, Leonardo. And this is part of the mission of the recently launched as the SN Europe. And to tell you a bit more about our ambition and future vision, I would like to call Adolf Glocke-Lenz, the first course chair of the SN Europe and Professor Angelori Caponi, the second course chair, I am the third but we also have a very powerful team, Maria Gortez-Busch as vice president of the SN network, Simone Cressy, Elena Gritt, Barbara DiPaola, Andrea Eracca, Maria Landudi and Dominique who are supporting this work. And of course the networks and the 300 members in Europe that will be supporting the mission. Adolf? Yeah, thank you Furbi so much for the presentation of the report and all the other colleagues who contributed to the presentation and to the report in fact and also for introducing our team of three. I think that was the first time that you used an enumeration. So we are a joint team, there's no number one. Well, I think this is really an important step we are now taking to move the engagement, the role of all the SDSN membership in Europe to a new level. We have been working closely on European topics across Europe in our respective countries also with Brussels over the last five, six years. We had significant meetings with colleagues in Brussels but we gained the feeling that there is a lot more to bring together in our group. So on the one hand to connect the research that is done from the from Cyprus to Ireland and from Helsinki to Lisbon. And I think this is the first role of this network that we come to really worldwide initiative and research projects. The second item important is obviously to talk to Brussels and Strasbourg to the European institutions in a much more cohesive way, in a much more explicit way and coordinated way. But the most important thing in my view is to work on European politics in our national capitals in our own home countries because the politics in Brussels are shaped by the governments of the member states and the accountability of these governments, national governments to their citizens, to the civil society, to academia is crucial. And we need to challenge them on this. I can tell from Germany that there is little public debate on how Germany behaves, so to speak, and performs in Brussels. There are some discussions between the usual suspects who do European studies and European politics on a general level, but then it comes to specific topics, in particular, sustainable development, the link between the sustainable development community and the European policies in a public debate is quite weak. And I think to link these different levels, I think we can make a huge contribution. Fifi, you have now raised the topic and presented the issue of the poverty Green Deal and semester. And there are many of us who join you in this work. Angelo will follow up on another focus. I only like to mention without elaborating on it that I also think that the external dimension of Europe is quite crucial for the implementation of the Green Deal and the SDGs. We have to look into this bill over. That is one thing, but we also have to talk about core transformation. There are many countries that are trapped in non-sustainable cooperation patterns with Europe, and there's change necessary on both sides. And that doesn't only relate to the poor or middle-income countries. That relates in the same way to countries like in North America, in Asia, or in Russia. And I close with this and I'm looking forward to the discussion we are having. Thank you. Thank you very much. Adolf, I am not no working with you. Angelo, Professor Angelo, please. Yes, just only a few words to say that I'm very pleased to be part of this initiative, as it was said, as the SNE Europe will collect 330 universities and the strength of universities, the strength of students which are following, who are following our courses will be very important in order to promote sustainable development and to implement policies that we were before mentioning. It was already said that there would be thematic groups. So we will work also by thematic groups. In particular, one meeting will be held on March 11 at 3 p.m. Central Europe time. And you are all invited to participate to it. It will be on sustainable agricultural systems and land use. So who is interested in that? In the next few days, we'll find a format to enroll in the website of SDSN Europe. On that occasion, we will show and illustrate what we are already doing as SDSN Europe at the EU level. We will present the first comparison among National Recovery Residence Plans that we have analyzed with reference to agricultural systems. We will highlight the importance of farmers and companies in the transition to sustainable food systems. In particular, presenting the project named Fixing the Business of Food, which we are running together with Columbia University and with the Barilla Foundation. But also we will show the so-called Fable Initiative, which is very important to build technical capacity and develop national pathways for sustainable land use and food systems. We will share a digital platform to valorize good practices in the field and we will talk about teaching initiatives. So this is the name. These are what we would like to discuss with you about sustainable food systems and land use. And of course, we are keen on receiving comments and to enlarge participation and to work together to this very important aim to contribute to more sustainable and resilient Europe. So I don't want to take time because we are running out of it. Thanks for participating today. Thanks to Phoebe and the wonderful report just illustrated and thanks to the panelists for their thoughtful and really exciting words. Phoebe, back to you. Thank you very much, Angelo. Angelo is a very important figure in mobilizing research, especially on water and food nexus in Europe. He is the initiator and visioner of the Prima Initiative that brought a significant amount of money for research on water and food in Southern Europe. And this is an important achievement and he is building on that to greater initiatives. And we are all thankful for his amazing contribution. We've reached our final session, the final part of this event which hosts Professor Jeffrey Sachs the major visioner of our efforts. This is a person that mobilizes the globe in order to implement the sustainability transition and the SDGs. And he will be in conversation with Peter Smith from the European Economic and Social Committee, Udo Bolman, a member of the European Parliament and Minister Ryan, the Irish Minister of Environment, Climate and Communication. Jeff, Peter, Udo, Minister Ryan, the floor is yours. How should the European Parliament and civil society mobilize and accelerate the implementation of the European Green Deal in consistent with the SDGs? PV, thank you very much. Thanks to all the colleagues for wonderful presentations and for all of the important work underlying this report and special thanks to all our friends who have created the European Green Deal. It is without question the most comprehensive, organized strategy in any part of the world to achieve sustainable development and this multi-pillar approach on energy, circular economy, sustainable land use, sustainable farm practices, digital economy is enormously impressive and enormously inspiring because it's having a huge impact not only through Europe, but in other parts of the world as well, giving both notice and guidance to the rest of the regions of the world to make similar strategies. But my question is, can it be implemented? It's complex, it's very challenging. Europe is complex enough with 27 countries each implementing individually as well as together. This is a multi-pillar approach. Our topic is about the engagement as well of civil society and of course the representatives in the European Parliament. So I'm thrilled that we have three leaders of this effort to reflect on what comes next, how to manage such a complex process to manage administratively, managerially, financially and politically and socially. So I'd like to turn first to Peter Schmidt of the European Economic and Social Committee. You are so deeply engaged in all of this effort and in bringing the economics, the social and environmental objectives together. Peter, what should we do and is Europe going to be able to implement this agenda? Yeah, thank you very much, Jeffrey. And thanks, Fiam, for organizing this meeting. I'm happy to join this meeting and hello to everybody. I mean, that's indeed a complex question, Jeffrey, when you ask me coming from the civil society. So we have been the first, as you mentioned, the first institution who called for a comprehensive food policy, who called for an overarching strategy in the implementing of SDG and so on and so on. So that means content-wise, the ESC is ready to join. And the problem is, and in this morning, we had in our ESC a meeting of our semester group and Fiam mentioned how important it is that we go through the semester, the European semester and try to implement the sustainable development. Let me call that like that. And we made a survey before, asked our members, what is the participation of civil society in the implementation of the recovery plans? So, and give you a short and quick answer to that, it is weak. It is absolutely weak and that's the problem. And Adolf mentioned it, that it would be so important that we must go to our national governments and talk to them what is necessary from the point of civil society, this view. So what is for our point of view necessary is, as I said, we must have an structured involvement on all levels from the civil society. So we had once the multi-level state called the platform so where we have been part. So this is gone. So why the commission doesn't follow up, has a follow up of this platform where they could gather the civil society's views. This is one very important point. The other very important point is, I think we must discuss quite deeply the question of the growth and coming to an wellbeing economy rather than just say we must keep our growth. We must really discuss that what we heard today. So third point is having a deep view on the social aspect. We heard that several times today, but my point of view is, and our point of view is we have to challenge also the distribution aspect in our society. So if you've mentioned this before, money is there. In our point of view, it is wrongly distributed. And that's the big problem. Give you an example. We heard right now that there should be a debate on sustainable food systems or on an agri-food system. So looking at this, in the CAP, the Common Agriculture Policy, we spent 60 billion euros in order to mitigate the situation of the farmers. Fair enough. So I don't challenge this. But, and this is the problem what we have to do. At the same time, the multinational in the food supply chain, they make the big money. So that means while the taxpayer pays 60 billion per year, at the same time we do not ask or challenge and say, look, multinational have 20% profit on the turnover. So this is the question also what we have, I think to discuss within this implementation in this implementation process. So to conclude, we are ready as civil society to be part of this in all the levels. Employers are ready, I know. The trade unions are ready. And the NGOs are ready for a long time to be part of that. What we need is we must have structured involvement under European and on the national level. That's for the first moment from my side. Thank you, Peter, very clear and very clear message from civil society. So it's perfect to turn to our friend Udo Bollmann, member of the European Parliament of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Party of European Socialists to talk about the role of the European Parliament in structuring overseeing this European Green Deal and Udo the role of civil society in this process. I hope Udo is here. There you are. You can see me, Jeff. How we see you and hear you. Absolutely. Oh, perfect. And goodness to you. Hello, everybody from Brussels. Forgive me that I was not able to follow the discussions earlier because I was in a different meeting, another meeting. So forgive me if I- Udo, maybe I could just, if I'm not sure when you joined but we went through for the first part of the program all of the pillars of the European Green Deal, the different components, the country level actions. I posed the question about its complexity. Can this be managed? And- Okay, I get it. Yeah, so let me add immediately on Peter that I totally agree that civil society is an asset for the sustainability strategy and that we have to do everything from the local to the global to involve civil society actors that push the agenda forward. Having said that, I would say it's not a joke but it's funny. The best news for the sustainability supporters in these days is coming from Rome with the news that our friend Enrico Giovannini has taken over the ministry for infrastructure in Italy. He is in command of a huge network, one of the best networks in the world to promote the SDGs. And I'm pretty sure that Enrico and the leadership of Draghi will be an asset to our community and will do everything to push for implementation. When you ask the parliamentarian how far are we and what can we do, I have to start with language because there is a danger. I know the Green Deal is extremely important and I know the dimension, the international dimension of the agenda of the Green Deal but there's a certain danger in the language of the European community that the SDGs as the central paradigm are replaced by the Green Deal by the notion of the Green Deal which is not a positive which is a negative trend. And we have to be aware of that and we have to hinder that from coming into existence. Why? The Green Deal is an excellent tool but the Green Deal is not the holistic program. The holistic program is the 2030 agenda. In the Green Deal as it was presented by the commission there is no agenda for instance. There is not enough social dimension but it's not only about these elements, it's about the basic idea of the transformation that we need. If we start from the awareness of the three big crisis we have health, we have climate and we have the ongoing recession as a result of that. If we have to fear one thing then this is growing inequalities on the globe amongst as well as within societies and growing inequalities will hinder us from achieving our goals. And what we need is quite the opposite is empowerment of our societies. Is empowerment of not only the urban also the rural areas is the empowerment of women and girls to come forward with their own ideas for their personal lives in peace and in friendship with the environment. Not only to reboost but rebuild what we have to do and use the energy that is internationally now spent into the idea to overcome the crisis also to get new ground, get new ideas of socio-ecological transformation. This is the decisive task. And therefore I tend to permanently speak of the Green Deal as one tool in the agenda of 2030 only as one tool because we need all the other elements as well. And in this interpretation it is a major useful chapter we could open and how could we do that? Of course the language of the European Commission became more and more sustainable. When Ursula von der Leyen set out the portfolios for the commissioners when she set out a political guidelines it's full of positive language about the SDGs. What is lacking is elaboration, implementation when it comes to hardcore policies. And here we have to get better by use of the strength of parliaments by use of the strength of civil society. We try to improve the margins, the benchmarks in the financial programs. In the seven year term, financial MFF is the central program of the European budget, forward planning for seven years. And we try to do that in the recovery fund, recovery program, which is extremely difficult because the member states tend to do what they want in the recovery program even more than in the central budget of the European Union. Secondly, we can use and we should use all legislative capacities we have. It starts with trade. Let me talk about trade because trade is one of the decisive areas where the European Union can turn the negative spillover in the interrelation with the rest of the world into the positive spillover. There is no necessity that we export old fashioned cast to Latin America or wherever. We can also export and produce a Latin America modern infrastructure for mobility which is environmentally friendly and many, many other examples could be given. The same is true for the legislation on development aid. We have to benchmark and use the inequality category as a decisive landmark for the improvement of our policies. Why not asking, for instance, in trade as well as in development aid, do we really serve the lower 40% of the population if we are engaging in trade agreements and development agenda policies or do we only speak about greening and we are increasing the inequalities. I fully take on board what Peter already said about the distinction between GDP counting and the well-being economy for all. That has to be, the letter has to be our benchmark and we have to extensively make use of analytical instruments. We demand from the commission, for instance, exposed as well as ex-ante analysis what really is the impact about what we are doing in the global world. The health crisis last but not least is a typical example that Europe came late and is very much looking only inward to analyze the inward problems. We have not really adopted a global strategy unlike Antonio Gutierrez yesterday rightly demanded by saying we need a master plan for the globe. We do not need national or only regional strategies. There is a huge danger that the rich countries of the North monopolize the vaccination production. By political family, the social democrats have started a worldwide campaign within the Progressive Alliance to demand a global strategy that is fair to the global self and helpful immediately because otherwise we are going to lose the deadly race against mutations. So wherever you go, whether that is health policy, agriculture, whether that is trade, whether that is development, we have to fight the agenda in the mindset as well in the structure of the programs and collect actors for more and more getting horizontal in our concrete policy set that is the way ahead. Thank you. Udo, thank you. That's very, very clear, very consistent also with Peter Schmidt's comments about the vital need to integrate the social dimensions fully into the European Green Deal. And definitely our work at the Sustainable Development Solutions Network and our report as Phoebe Kunduri laid out at the beginning of this session is to show that this is part of the overall SDG agenda. Just like you said, it's a core tool. It is not a replacement agenda. And I really thank you for that point and we will make sure that we take that on always fully in our own work together with the European Parliament and European institutions. Our third panelist, I'm delighted to say is Minister Eamon Ryan, who is the Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications of Ireland. Minister, thank you very much for being with us. You have the responsibility to implement this agenda in a very complex one as we've been discussing. Could you give us your perspective first on Ireland's challenge in implementing the European Green Deal as part of the SDGs and also how you see the European-wide processes working. So, Minister, if you could join now. It's good to see you. Thank you. Thank you, dear friend. I hope you can hear me well as well. And maybe come from the European perspective first because I'm on the Council of Ministers and that is an important place. It is an important place where we coordinate. Go back to you, ask that question. How do 27 countries manage this coordination? And I would add, and I would say this is an Irishman. We also have to bring the British with us. They haven't sailed off into the Atlantic. They're still stuck on the Teutonic Plate that is the continent of Europe that were two islands off it, but we will have to make sure we still cooperate with Britain, even though they're not a member of the European Union. And I think the Council of Ministers give a sense of hope. I get a sense, I'm on four of the Councils as it happens, but the energy and the environment ones are two in particular with responsibility in this area. And I get a sense there is leadership. There is just shaping up it seems to me so we could have across political perspectives that this has to work, it has to involve everyone. Every place matters. And in my mind, the politics of that then is not the politics of division. It's the politics of cooperation and collaboration. And in the European Council, I would say that has to be collaboration East-West. We haven't been good at that maybe in our union we need to improve that and need to be real understanding that this is to the benefit of the Eastern part of Europe as well as the Western. I would also just to back up what Udo says, we cannot look this as fortress Europe either. We have to in my mind, particularly the run up to the likes of COP26 this November, we have to engage with the developing countries so that there's a real program for system change that allows them rise on the back of this Green Deal. And so we will, yes, we have to look at this as a European project, but Europe within the global diplomacy needs to act in support of climate adaptation and resilience and climate justice, particularly in the run up to COP26 in my mind. But also then we need to bring it home, local. The environmental movement has learned to lesson. I think we've made mistakes in the last 30, 40 years. We made too much mistakes saying it was part personal responsibility. You know, if you change your light bulb, we can save the planet and people, they didn't buy it. It was too much putting responsibility on individuals as we as governments have to take a role. But at the same time, what we're looking on is not putting all the emphasis on individual responsibility, but we need individual engagement of our citizens because in truth, if we're to make the change in just say climate in improving our homes energy efficiency, you have to have the homeowner with us involved. If we're changing the transport system, which we need to do, that's not done easily unless you have the community buying into the changes we need to make. If we're to do nature-based solutions to restore biodiversity as well as tackle climate, we need every farmer as the frontline on our side. So I think on that, a few things. So as governments, we need to work at that council minister's level and that international diplomacy level, but we need to bring it back home. And we start by listening to people and asking for help rather than telling people what to do. Admitting that there are some uncertainties in this as the technology evolves, we learn by doing. Having patients, I remember at a meeting when someone said we need the same patients that those people who built great European cathedrals, you know, when you laid the first stone knowing that it would be your grandchildren might only put the top to the spire. We need a similar long-term commitment to this change. And we need to change our language. And I agree with Udo as he's saying on that as well. It's a language that has to speak to the heart as well as the head and speak to certain values that raise your spirits, not just your wallet. And so that's no small thing of all everything you have to do. Maybe just from an Irish perspective, God with the world's worst sinners when it comes to looking after environment. And but maybe as prodigal son who returns, our daughter having kind of seen the light of our errant ways and we start taking action in this which we are. Maybe that's something that'll be welcome as a, and each of us showing and sharing best knowledge. How do we, how are we gonna do this and show that it is possible? We can achieve these sustainable development goals in all their assets, in all their facets, in their social as well as their environmental and economic guys. Thank you, minister. Could I ask you what is the basic strategy for decarbonizing in Ireland? How do you see the challenges and what kind of energy sources do you think will be, turn out, will it be wind power or what will be the main approach, do you think, technologically? It'll be collaboration actually, because to make it work in my mind, you need, you can't just do it on your own country. It will be renewable. In Ireland's case, it'll be wind and solar. But to make that work, we need to connect with our neighbors. It will only actually work on a Northwest European region because in that way you can balance the power. As the redder fronts come in over the Atlantic and we face the front of them on the coast, on the edge of the Atlantic, we need to share and interconnect these new high-voltage direct current cables which can carry power over a long distance with very little losses. That will allow us the real, the center of this revolution and it is a revolution for the better in energy is the balance between variable supply and variable demand. And that's both at the distribution grid where electric vehicles and heat pumps and all the power systems are turning on and off to balance that variable power. And similarly at the transmission level that you have interconnection with neighboring countries. It's one of the reasons I mentioned my British colleagues because they would still be, have to be part of that network, that connected network. So I think that it's offshore, in my mind for Ireland anyway, because our sea area is 10 times our land area, it'll be floating offshore wind at scale beyond compare, beyond anything we've ever seen before. And it'll be transported either via hydrogen or via high-voltage direct current cables. And when we really think big about this, we'll start the next decade and then the next decade after that, this is the cathedral building, we will connect to the solar south and we'll connect to hydro from the north and from the Alps and we will connect it to hyper energy efficiency. First thing really fulfilling a bath to put the plug in, so efficiency first. And it will work because it's a better system. It's a better economy. It is, these renewables are available everywhere, be that geothermal or be it wind or be it solar or be it biomass, careful biomass because we have to look after biodiversity as well as climate. You can't just focus on the climate perspective alone. But it's utterly doable. It's more stable. It gives security in what I was saying there about north-south. That sharing of power with solar south is going to lead to a much better, stronger relationship between Europe and North Africa and the rest of the African continent in my mind. And it's also better east-west where it brings us away from the security fears that have surrounded energy for the past five, six decades. So yeah, I think it's renewable. It's all about the grid and its efficiency first. I think, by the way, if I may say that is a great vision, absolutely in my view, exactly what I would like to hear. And my question, because I've always worried about it, frankly, is, I think that this idea that it has to be European scale and even beyond Europe to North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and so on, can Europe actually coordinate enough and cooperate enough on the actual investments to get that completely transnational vision implemented? Because if you do that, it's going to work. Yeah, I don't see any reason why not. Go back to what I said about the council ministers. And I was on at 10 years ago as energy minister and we signed our first North Sea's offshore grid initiative then. For the 10 years we lost, we became fixated on the competitive advantages of fracked gas and we kind of spent our time worrying about that. But now, I think once transformed in the last five years. I say that was a distraction for us too in the United States, as you know. Yeah, I know it sure was. But the advantages, the auction systems that European countries have set up as an example, the British and the Dutch and the Danes and Germans and so on on offshore wind have de-risked. These are all really large capital projects, like these turbines are not small, they're Eiffel tower size and they're floating in a rough sea like it's tough. So to make that work, you need to de-risk the planning and the financing and the grid connection and all the kind of the boring but critical stuff so that you can bring down the cost because the biggest cost is around uncertainty and the biggest risk on that is around government planning and other actions. So what we've seen in Europe is that has happened. We brought the cost right down of offshore wind and solar. So the next step is this international collaboration and that's always difficult because every energy minister likes to shuffle around on his own map of his own, his or her own country. Oh, I'm doing this here and I'm doing that there. But I think the union and I think the commission and I know the German and French and Spanish and British governments, including our own and Dutch and Danes in this, I'm talking about my own backyard in our Northwest Europe. I think we understand that it'll only work in collaboration and it is all about those interconnectors reduced amount of baselows you have to have a spinning reserve backup. So it's much more efficient. It requires trust. It requires trust that if the lights, if it risks the lights going off that actually we have our neighbor who will be able to turn to. And that's the question. Can we get that trust? I think we can. I think because Europe has gone for this. So like Ursula von Der Leyen in fair play to her, she's put the cards on the table. It's the European Green Deal. This is our game plan. And I don't hear anyone disagreeing. I don't see any political party saying that isn't the clever way to go. So that gives me a certain sense because you can't just stop start on this. This has to survive three or four commissions. It has to survive four or five national elections. But there is that sense. This belongs to everyone as an idea. And that's what will make it work. Excellent. Thank you very, very much. Actually, I do want to ask one more thing. Can EIB play an important role as a European wide institution to help to provide that European wide de-risking and so forth? They are already. And they're actually been world leading. Can I give a shout out to young Irishman Andrew McDowell. He was head of renewables, energy investment in lending in EIB, he was vice president in the outgoing EIB. He changed the rules so that EIB would no longer invest in fossil. That's the way to go. Like I said, we made a mistake in the environmental movement that we're putting all the blame on the individual responsibility. Well, things changed in the last five years. We learned that actually you stop the problem at source. You divest at source. So we stopped offshore oil and gas exploration. We stopped fracking on our island. It's not easy, but we're stopping burning coal. The EIB have got that as well. We stop investing in fossils. They've committed to that. That then turns the tap onto renewables. And that's where the financial markets are going. That's where that's... Listen, if you're not in that track, goodbye. You're missing the big picture of what's happening in the world. Excellent. Thank you very much. We're taking very careful notes. That's a lot of wisdom. And we wish you all success. And of course, this Sustainable Development Solutions Network for Europe is there to work together with you, universities across Europe, academics. We wanna make sure that this works and we're really committed to that. And you've given us a lot of encouragement, minister. So thanks for your leadership in this. Really appreciate it. Wonderful. Thank you to all of our panel, to Peter Schmidt, to Udo Bolman, to minister Ryan. We're at the end of the time. I'm gonna turn it back to the co-leader of SDSN Europe and the chair of this process, Phoebe. Thank you so much and back over to you. Thank you so much. Thank you for inspiring all of us towards this belief that we can help transform the world towards sustainable place for our children and their children. I want to thank the speakers, the co-authors of the report, the members of the senior working group, the SDSN Europe Co-Chairs and Managers. We didn't take questions from the audience because we did not have time, but I've answered all the questions and I am sure if my answers are not clear enough, write back to me and I will direct you to the relevant people. The slides and videos will be sent in a follow-up email. And I want to close by saying, we feel this is an once in a century opportunity to steer economic growth towards sustainability, sustainability that respects profitability, the environment and the society. So let's join forces to mobilize all we have to achieve this goal. Thank you all for making the time to be with us. Thank you.