 Okay, we can get started there. Good afternoon, everybody. So it's a pleasure for me to welcome all of you to this today's today's program. And to ICTP, some of you are joining from Zoom. So joining ICTP remotely, but it's already nice to see that we are returning more and more to a normal situation post COVID. And it's a particular pleasure for ICTP because ICTP has been a founding partner of the International Year for Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development 2022. And as part of that commitment, we have planned a series of activities during the year, including panel discussions and keynote talks related to this theme throughout the year. And this is the first of this series. So I'm very happy that we have a really excellent program today, particularly relevant for this International Year. We're talking about the importance of basic sciences in addressing the global energy crisis, which clearly is a major challenge for all of us. And it will focus on how basic science can help to bring renewable energy conversion to the forefront of world's future energy landscape. And we have some of the world experts in this field. Next to have here, Professor Richard Cutlow, he's an expert in solid state chemistry and material science at the University College London, and co-president of interacademy partnership. You will hear more technical, more scientific introduction later in the, when the talk, the speakers are introduced. And we also have Pachanita Kamyugankit, he's an expert in photovoltaics from Chula Longcomb University, joining us remotely from Thailand. He's a former ICTP prize winner. So we are very happy to have these two speakers today. And the discussion will be moderated by ICTP graduate diploma program alumnus, Stefan Ekenmo, who is now a scientist at the University of Duisburg SN, and his research focuses on computational descriptions of photovoltaic water splitting. So related to this team. So if you are joining online, please don't hesitate to write your questions in the chat and they will be addressed after the presentations. So we are very happy that we will be joined today by Michelle Spiro, who is the president of IYBSD, the International Legal and Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development 2022. It's a major important year approved by the United Nations, and the efforts of Professor Spiro were really central to making it happen. So I give the floor to Michelle now. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I hope you can hear me. So dear colleagues, dear participants, thank you very much, Attish and ICTP for organizing this event on the importance of basic sciences in addressing the global energy crisis. This fits perfectly well with the goals of the International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development IYBSD 2022. The opening ceremony of this international year will only be on July 8th at UNESCO headquarters due to the last proclamation by the United Nations General Assembly on December 2nd last year. But since you were ready before that date, the date of the opening ceremony, your event, this event is already part of the International Year. By the way, just to inform you, the closing ceremony is expected to be held in the third quarter of 2023, a bit more than one year after the opening ceremony. At CERN, in the new building dedicated to basic sciences, the science gateway designed by the famous Italian architect Renzo Piano. So 2023 will also be used to organize events. This is for you if you want to go on in 2023, you are welcome. Basic sciences and curiosity-driven sciences constantly re-enchant our world and contribute to make it desirable and sustainable. Find up by the desire to understand our world, each generation throughout the story has added to the well of knowledge built up by previous generations, from which subsequent generations are able to draw their inspiration, the inspiration they need to solve the problems they face. It is the exact opposite of what we are currently doing with our planet's natural resources. Basic sciences, curiosity-driven, are the sources of discoveries which turn into applications which serve an inclusive sustainable development, which altogether discoveries, applications and inclusive sustainable development must boost collaborative and open basic sciences. This is a virtuous circle that we want to promote. This process should involve scientists, private sector, decision makers and the society at large. This should apply obviously to the global energy crisis. For this, basic sciences must be funded and used for education. ICTP, which is emblematic of basic sciences, must be supported and continue its mission of research, education and multicultural dialogue. Long life to ICTP, long life to basic sciences and to sustainable development. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you, Michelle. Now I'll give the floor to Amal Kastri. She's joining us from UNESCO. She's the chief of section there in the capacity building in basic sciences. Again, very closely related to this team and a close partner of ICTP. Thank you. Thank you very much, Aish. Good afternoon, everyone. Good morning also for those who had the morning. Dear students, colleagues and distinguished professors, it gives me a great pleasure to join you today in one of the activities celebrating the International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development. As you all know, UNESCO is the only organization in the United Nations family which has science inscribed in its name. It's first Director General Julian Huxley was actually an imminent pathologist and he was committed to the popularization of science. And from the beginning UNESCO recognized the importance of making official contact with the International Scientific Society in order to promote scientific cooperation across the boundary of nations and of bringing together scientists and others concerned with the applications of science. UNESCO remains well placed to proclaim the message that access to scientific and technological progress is a human right and that human rights must be at the center of all scientists' priorities. UNESCO's commitment now as ever is to put science and the technology at the service of the welfare of people everywhere to eradicate poverty and to ensure sustainable development for all. As you heard from Michelle as proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly as the International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development. 2022 will be the ultimate chance to try to achieve important goals such as strengthening science education and training, increasing the access to basic science funding resources and promoting open science. These are among several other goals, all of which serve to raise awareness of the role of basic science in improving people's life, specifically when we are facing a global pandemic for example and thus achieving sustainable development. This year will be a great opportunity to promote inclusive collaboration in fundamental research by fostering gender-balancing and geographically diverse networks. This year will promote capacity development opportunities as well as formal and informal education activities in the basic sciences. It will also organize major conferences and workshops in different parts of the world and in particular in developing countries. It will advertise existing or new initiatives of all sorts distributed all over the world. And we all hope that this will result in catalyzing basic sciences in developing countries which could be helped and supported and also celebrated regularly even after the year of the International Year of Basic Sciences. We will inaugurate the year on the 8th of July 2022 here at the headquarters of UNESCO in Paris. This event will bring together policymakers, scientists and the private sector with inclusive coverage from both gender and geographical perspectives as well as public at large. We will try to put the spotlight on the links between basic sciences and sustainable development goals which will be a key moment to convince economic and political leaders as well as the public of the importance of investing in basic science. Dear colleagues, I invite you all to join us on the 8th of July. And even if you cannot join us, I urge you to take the opportunity and to deliver a loud and the clear message that we need to sustain basic science research in order to sustain our lives. Thank you very much. And I'm looking forward to listening to Professor Katlo and the professor, and I would like to thank our colleagues at the ICTP for organizing this event. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Amal. Now I give the floor to Ken Mo, who will be the moderator. So thanks, Archie. So it's a privilege to me for me today to moderate this event which is full of significance. So before starting with the panelists, before they share their rich experience about renewable energies. So I will just have us, I want us to have a glance at what is happening in Africa, what is the potential in renewable energy, what can be done, and then what are the rooms for making the world better. So, I'm Stefan, alumni from ICTP Condensed Smarter Diploma Program, actually presently in Germany. So, this year is dedicated to basic science, as stated by the United Nations, and whenever we write publications, we who are dealing with renewable energy, there's always a sentence that comes back. So we study, we do this study, this research, because renewable energy is an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels and so on and so forth. This comes over, right, but actually renewable energy has established itself like an urgent necessity, right, to get peace, freedom and justice in the world. This is because the scarcity of carbon, I mean fossil fuels, right, can lead to social instabilities as we see in Europe actually, and also for freedom because many states' country now understand the necessity to reduce their dependency on external supply, which is actually still fossil fuels, which constitute 80% of the energy supply in the world, and also for justice and equity. You see, this is an image in Cameroon, that image here, this one, this one here on the right, this is a village somewhere where I was born in Cameroon, from Goundary to Garawa in the north of Cameroon. The electrical power is just passing on top of the village, you can imagine what people in this village can go through, right. So 12 out of 17 of the STD goals can be achieved in this place, right, from education access to health care, I mean food or stuff like that. So renewable energy is a solution to achieve at least 12 of these STD goals. So, and then there's lots of room in Africa, right, to use renewable energy to improve the condition of people. There's still according to the African Development Bank, I think 1500 gigawatt of unexploited potential in renewable energy. And then this includes hydropower, wind, solar energy, or other types of energy like geothermal energies and so on. And then you see in red, this is the on tape potential, right. For each of these categories, you can see that for hydropowers, which actually has been the commonly used source of energy in Africa for years for decades now, because of the continuous drop across the continent. The hydropower is not, is not more reliable, right, it's not more an energy on which people can count fully, because also there's a problem in the transport. So because the distribution networks is age and saturated and then this leads to 30% lost in the electricity capacity. And then for people who go to Africa Ralph and Nicola, you were in town, right, you can stay for days without electricity. Right, so you know the reality. And then also for wind, wind energy is booming in Africa, particularly in East Africa. You see this is for example a wind power farm in Kenya. Right. And Africa is a potential place to promote wind energy because because of the geographic landscape. There are many places with good geographic landscape that can promote the high speed of the wind, and also the efficient pressure gradient, which are the ingredients that we need to make good use of wind energy. So, another one is the solar power, power, the power from solar energy. You see this is for example the distribution, you can see that the solar capital of Africa is high compared to other countries, or places in the world. And then Africans are making good benefit of it you see for example in Morocco, in Morocco we have the largest concentrated solar power plant, which produces around 60 megawatt of energy. And then this is nothing compared to the 1000 gigawatt of on tape solar potential. Apart from these sources there's also photo catalytic chemical energy conversion, right, the recent progress in basic science have shown that one can achieve a lot by using the sun energy. And then this is where basic science come, because the basic science can help to tune or to make good use to, to allow a rational production of energy and the efficient use. For example, for those dealing with it, they're doing this catalysts like me or other other parties. So basic science is very important for the official material characterization rational design of catalysts improvement of property to improve, improve the chemical energy conversion and storage, and to reduce the loss of efficiency. This is for example, in case of solar cell when you move from cells to modules is the loss efficiency and then basic science is important right to tackle this issue. So these are just some of the various point and then the question is, okay, what's happening in Africa with all this potential, why I think not moving. The answer is simple is in this distribution that you can see, this is how much countries in the world are investing into science, you see Italy somewhere around to Germany United States, South Korea is of course on top, and then you see that if you look at the African countries here you will just see countries from the South South Africa namely, and then country from the Maghreb so this is actually Morocco, Egypt, and then this clearly explain why the contribution of Africa in the scientific research to 1 in 2% in the world is polarized, it comes mainly from the northern part and the southern part of Africa so they are, there's lot to do, right, to make people invest into science, and then it's not just by driving the political wheel, right, to invest in fundamental science. The East African Institute of fundamental science is the pride of ICTP, right, when you talk with people like Sandro Stando, he will always tell you that it's going well in Rwanda but he seems to forget that President Kajami was standing here where I stand today, he was sitting there, and then he talked with Professor Quevedo and about the importance of basic science and then Rwanda had his first program of master in physics just in 2014 or 15 if I remember, and then seven years after Rwanda is booming, then what is the answer, the answer is the political wheel, but the political wheel is not everywhere in Africa, so Africa is driven by the need to innovate because of problems, hunger, poverty and stuff like that, so people have to act, engage and this is what I do personally on the personal point of view, because I'm heading a project which is dedicated to build capacity in fundamental science to involve decision makers, local authorities like we did in Chang with Ralph and Nicola, we talk to decision makers about the importance, they have to value science, the dress that Ralph is wearing with Nicola here, in my culture this means that you are a noble right, you do something which is noble, so the king by giving this dress to Nicola and Ralph is just in front of Nicola here is to say to Nicola and Ralph that you did the right, so they are value basic science, then they can talk to authorities or political leaders whenever they come for elections, so this is a trick also, this is a social political approach that we hope will bring some, so we have to go beyond capacity building and then Professor Covedo said something when Professor Gadami was here that they will help strengthening the continent research capacity, but before strengthening you have to create vocations and build capacity, right? You see, we only have 200 scientists per million in habitants in Africa compared to 1500 in the world, so we still have to create vocation not only to make them stronger, because in 50 or 40 years Africa will be 2 billion habitants, and then I'm not sure if you ask me where the diploma student who were here 10 years ago, many of them left academia, the left basic science, their industry or doing business doing stuff like that, so I'm afraid that we have, okay, it's not good to say that, so I'm not too optimistic right by improving increasing the number of scientists, so we have to go beyond capacity building and encouraging young African scientists to join topics that align with the local need that we did recently in Kinshasa, we selected Falun who joined our university and this person to work on energy conversion. What we do is that we also have engagement project, right, we engage celebrity to promote basic science, and what we do is that we come to a station like ICTP we talk with scientists about basic science topics, and then we try to disseminate it into movies, right, to touch the society, because in Africa it works the other way around, it's when the society is interested that politicians right take decisions, so it's not like here. So, this is what we have done we have produced a movie science in the city which talk only about basic science. And then, apart from that, you also engage celebrity to go to university to bring scientists out of the lab to get them engaged for science. So, basic science is not just a matter of scientists, it's the matter of the whole African society that needs to boost the interest to invest into science. Thank you this is what I wanted to say about Africa. And then today is the privilege for me to introduce two bright scientists, right, with a very important track record publications, expert with catalysis synthesis. Today we have somebody who received a night food from the Queen Elizabeth to for his important contribution to basic science engagement collaboration between institution. So, how do you have the honor to introduce to you sir Richard Cutlow. Well, thank you very much Stefan for the introduction. And it's a real great pleasure to be able to speak at this meeting and I'm very grateful for the invitation. What I'm going to try and do is just outline some of the very many scientific challenges that will be needed if we're going to achieve sustainability. So, sustainability generally, but will have quite a focus on sustainability in energy. You'll see from my various addresses, but I've added the interacademy partnership and that's important for this talk I have the privilege to be one of the co presidents of the interacademy partnership, and the IAP is doing a great deal of work as I hope to show that is highly relevant to our discussions today. So just let me first say a few words about the interacademy partnership it's a global network of academies of science, medicine and engineering, close on 150 members of academies it has four regional networks, and it can call upon this is a key importance, 30,000 leading universities, engineers and health professionals in over 100 countries and its secretariat Trieste secretariat is hosted nearby by twice and ICTP. Very quickly, what is the IAP trying to do. It's very much trying to build the capacity and empower regional networks of academies and their national members and following the early discussion, we're very concerned in developing academies in Africa. We want to empower academies to provide really authoritative advice on global regional and national issues. Of course we want to promote in general the importance of science, scientific research science education, and science literacy and populations at large. And then we want to build the IAP itself to be a more resilient and progressive network. Here's just one example of a recent piece of work recent output of the IAP, a very major project on the key issue of climate change and health. And this was a kind of global synthesis, our four regional networks each produced a report focusing on their region. We synthesized that into a global report that will be released very shortly and there's some details there on the launch event for those of you are interested. But let me get back to the question of science and sustainability. Well, in some ways, this slide may be the most important one in my presentation, because I think it's an important that we all as a community need to make. And that is to achieve sustainability. We need innovation in basic science and technology, of course, together with societal and behavioral change. I say this because I have heard on more than one occasion views from very senior people that we do actually have the scientific knowledge we need now to achieve sustainability, including sustainability and energy. And essentially what we need is development and deployment, but that quite frankly simply isn't true. And I've added here the innovation in physics, chemistry and material science will be essential. I hope to show that during this talk of course innovation in many other areas will be as well but these are disciplines that I know something about. Now a few words about sustainability. Here are a few important definitions. I really like the one on the top left there, ability to provide the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations and economic development, social development, environmental protection, they're all interdependent and emphasizing that natural resources should be used at a rate that doesn't deplete supplies over the long time. And then residue shouldn't be unmanageable. So these are really important points. And of course we've already mentioned in Stefan's presentation, the key importance of the SDGs and the fact that science and scientific innovation will contribute to the impact of many of them. And again now returning to the IAP, IAP has done important work in this field. We had a substantial project on improving scientific input to global policymaking with a focus on the SDGs. And this was trying to aiming to come mobilize its members to really focus on this issue, including the growing number of young academies and I think this has had real impact but it's work in progress. The report urges everyone to engage openly and inclusively with this important field. And here's another one, again perhaps relevant to Stefan's presentation approach. We finished about three or four years ago on harnessing science, engineering and medicine to address Africa's challenge. I think Stefan has shown how crucially important this is. And this report made the case for strengthening the science policy interface in Africa, particularly to accelerate the SDGs and the Africa Union's STI strategy for Africa. Well, again, let me kind of now return again to the scientific themes. These are some of the ones that probably won't be able to talk about them all, but some of the ones I'd like to say a few words about. I'll talk a little bit about the circular economy, the science that will be needed there, the challenge of biomass, many, many major challenges, decarbonization of transport, a crucial issue, sustainable nitrogen fixation. That is often not realized how important money is. And then finally, if I have time, the importance in discussing all these issues to do what is called lifecycle analysis. Let's look at the circular economy and again, things are going to try and talk about linearity versus circularity, green chemistry, the whole issue of plastics that we hear so often how come you achieve a circular plastics economy. And the challenge is relating to CO2. And that is what the contrast between the linear and the circular economy. On the left is what we're doing at present. Essentially, we take raw materials, we process them into various goods, we use them or consume them, and then we dispose of waste. That's not entirely what we do at present, but it is largely we need to move to what's on the right hand side. We need with bio systems to make consume and then enrich the next cycle. We need with technical materials to make use and then return. And these are easy to say, but they are major challenges. And again, the IAP has made I think a significant contributions to policy relating to the circular economy. I'm here highlighting work of ESAC that's the European Academy's Science Advisory Council, our European regional network. 2016 it produced two reports on the circular economy, relating to critical materials and indicators, and then a more recent report on packaging plastics in the circular economy, and then examine some of the key issues relating to trying to achieve a circular economy with plastics. Green chemistry I've mentioned and this is a major movement. My chemistry is the core of my scientific expertise and the movement to green chemistry is one of the most important developments in the last 20 years in the discipline. What do we need to do? Replace traditional chemical technologies by greener alternatives, employing catalytic technologies, and you'll hear me shortly say a lot about catalysis. Secondly, absolutely crucial. We need to move from fossil based to renewable biobased manufacture. People don't always realize that as well as depending to a large extent, but to a declining extent on fossil carbon for fuels, we depend on fossil carbon for a great deal of our manufactured goods and we're going to have to move away from that. And then we need to move, again, away from the linear economy to a circular column, which builds in circularity throughout the whole process. Now again, and let me draw attention to relevant work of the IAP, IANAS that's the interacademy network of Academy of Sciences in the Americas, a report that provides science based analysis of the current energy situation in the Americas and looks to the point that this is a book, and I think a very relevant and important book. Let me now return to plastics, and I'm going to hear use a number of slides that were given to me by a very good friend and colleague, and that David Sturm from the University who leads a major center concern with developing sustainable technologies, particularly in the chemicals industry. Now some of the statistics on plastic utilization are pretty stunning. A million plastic bottles can sport globally every minute. That's an amazing statistic. And then another one each person on the planet will generate twice their body weight in plastic waste every year by 2050. That's if we have the kind of business as usual scenario. Here is some more data we're comparing where we are this is a few years ago actually 2014 with 2050. There are a number of things plastic production would triple and less things change. What I really like here ratio of plastics to fish in the ocean by weight present it's a fish are five times the weight global weight in the ocean, five times that of plastics 2050 business as usual. That's one to one, very big increase in the component of oil and the, what is done as the carbon budget. So what are we doing present this. We're doing something that isn't particularly circular at all. Here's this again is a little bit older data 2013 it will be higher now 28 million tons annual production. So that goes into landfill 40% some of its incinerated to generate energy. Some goes quite a lot goes into leakage just gets generally dispersed including in the oceans, about 14% collected for recycling statistics will have improved over the last seven or eight years but still will find those landfill incineration leakage are pretty high. This is what we need to move to. We need to have the majority recycled. We can reuse some plastic plastics and we need to change the feedstock or something I'll come back to later on now it's easy to say this. There are technical challenges in all these technical challenges in recycling in reuse in design and production. And these will require basic science to really bought by they will require basic science not just development for their solution. We need we will need catalytic technologies. We need energy efficient processes. We need to use earth abundant materials catalyst self healing materials. Program degradation chemical recycling and design of course very important design for reuse and recycling. So there are some really basic challenges here across a broad spectrum I say including design. Let me move on to CO2 challenge. Now we're all aware of the CO2 challenge as it relates to climate I'd say just very briefly. But there are other issues we need to think about CO2. We almost certainly going to need carbon dioxide as a carbon source. And we're going to need what I think it's very unlikely that the world will move be able to move entirely away from hydrocarbon fuels. So we will need sustainable hydrocarbon fuels. Now just a word. This is something you all know CO2 challenge climate changing carbon flows we need a drastic reduction in CO2 emissions. This is just showing you some of the scenarios if we're going to keep temperature increases within a manageable limits by 2050 so this is well known I'm not going to dwell on it. But I will dwell on these other aspects of CO2 challenge. We will need carbon dioxide to become a carbon source to make chemicals and fuels. As I said, many of the materials we use require carbon fabrics that we're wearing to most of the carbon sources of course some are bio sources but most of the other carbon sources are from fossil fuels and we will need to replace them. I think we will need technologies those developments here for carbon capture and utilization but again more basic science and technology. Now enabling science the key rubs started to keep coming back to catalysis, but this have just given you one example of a really key basic science challenge. And that is carbon dioxide hydrogenation I hope to get effectively carbon dioxide to react with hydrogen to produce useful molecules to use it as a carbon source and their groups all around the world working on this challenge. I'm just going to allow to give you some snippets of science during this talk so I'm going to give you one which I think it's going to say a few words about a really beautiful piece of science. And this is looking at what iron and iron nickel catalyst for carbon dioxide hydrogenation. It's work of a group that was a Cardiff University. It's now at the University of Leeds headed by Professor Nora Dillew. And what they're trying to use to use CO2 as again as a carbon source produce useful chemicals formic acid methanol. And they're going to use these iron nickel catalyst which I'm not going to have a number of advantages there are the abundance of the non toxic and they have a number of specific chemical advantages, which you make you think they could be good catalyst. Now what is a really neat thing about this work is that they it was bio inspired. It started from the things that are shown on this slide in on the ocean bed, you get what are called hydrothermal vents, where hot water is issued and surrounding those you get iron sulfides and also surrounding them, you get a lot of the basic molecules that are building blocks of the molecules of life. And so it's been speculated that the origin of life is associated with these hydrothermal vents as a speculative argument. Another interesting thing you see is that some of biological what we call hydrogenases these are biological catalysts that will react hydrogen will use hydrogen. They have clusters of iron and sulfur in their center those are the active sites that carry out the catalysis. So this set these people thinking. So very carefully at the structure of the iron and sulfur in these hydrogenases that's on the right hand side, the yellow is a sulfur blue, the iron, and then they looked at the surface of iron sulfide, and they found they were very similar, very similar So then they took these iron sulfides did a lot of work on them and they show but they really worked as these catalysts they would take would allow hydrogen to react with CO2 to produce useful molecules methanol acetic acid so really beautiful piece of basic science. Before I leave the circular economy. Again, here's just those who are interested in plumbing the depths here. This was a volume of philosophical transactions the Ross society based on an excellent discussion meeting based in the society about two or three years ago. A few words about biomass and again here I should thank my very another very good colleague of mine Chris Hardacre from the University of Manchester has done excellent work in this field now again. Just to remind you what what we're doing at present what we need to move to on the top left hand side we have an oil refinery that's what we're using at present again very much for carbon sources and for our fuels. We need to move to a bio refinery where the input is not fossil fuels, the input is biomass but there are major fundamental basic scientific issues here. Now just to remind you we need to be more sustainable actually with current fossil fuel transformations and the use of renewables. And just again I don't want to burn you too much chemistry. What again some of the basic challenges. If you look this very very general terms. Look, what we get from fossil fuels, we get hydrocarbons come molecules made out of carbon and hydrogen. What do we get from biomass, we get carbohydrates on the whole. So that had carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. And this again is going to require really good basic science. We're going to have to use if we want to replace the fossil fuel feedstocks we're going to have to do something about these oxygenated molecules and again a lot of people are working on that. So here's another big challenge with biomass and that is the possible antithesis between the use of biomass as food and the use of fuels and that's been very, very widely debated. But if you look at what's happening in the field now the there isn't the emphasis is growing on the utilization of waste biomass in response to that challenge. So just a little snippet of science. Let's look at biodiesel again by diesel and important. Important process one of growing importance. This transforms bio oils into biodiesel bio oils are what we call these triglycerides so just three long molecules linked together. You can correct them with methanol not going to a detail essentially break them down and into the biodiesel, but you produce this molecule called glycerol which is a waste product and that actually has been a real problem. Now some of my colleagues at the University of Cardiff came up with something really neat. They took this waste glycerol that developed a catalytic process that converts it back to methanol. You can continue the cycle there you've developed a circular cycle so a really neat piece again of basic science. Now I want to move on to decarbonization of transport, obviously, absolutely vital as we move to sustainable energy. And I'll talk a bit first about high energy density batteries, and then a few words about increasing the topical area of developing sustainable aviation fuel. Now again, I AP has been active in this field this is very recent work. The IP on the network of African sciences, science academies nice about South African regional network. It's been an 18 month study to example, consider the issues relating to decarbonization transport in the continent, and the report is now available. And the workshop it highly we had a very, very interesting and successful workshop last November, that's produced a report highlighted the increasing trend in transport demand motorization CO2 emissions, but some of the promising challenges across the continent. And he did again highlight some of the major challenges Africa is going to need far more transport as the population expands and the economy expands, but we need to do that in a sustainable way. Let me say a few words about batteries for electric cars. I think these are dated by the way for the UK transport 30% of CO2 emissions note the 90 in the UK 90% of car journey is a less than 30 miles so very appropriate for electrification. Now we use as you all know in electric cars we use batteries, and just a few words about the way in which the science of batteries has developed over the last 200 well 220 years. And it was founded of course by Alexandra Volta, with his then revolutionary voltage pile. It's really interesting piece of history of science, Volta's pile enable the whole range of absolutely breakthrough discoveries, including the discoveries made by Faraday, which led to the electric motor, and to the basis of electrical generation. So the field evolves over the years, and the real state of the art batteries now are certainly for transport or lithium base they have very high specific energy, energy storage per kilogram and energy storage per volume. So these are, I say the greatest advance in electric chemistry over the last year. And I just want to talk about one, well one key lithium ion battery this is the lithium cobalt oxide system. This was the basic science here was developed by John Goodenough, and his team, when john was working at the University of Oxford around 4040 on years ago. So simple chemistry, you know an anode on the right hand side with lithium intercalated graphite, and as the battery discharges lithium ions move across on this kind of intercalate into between the layers of this cobalt oxide so pretty simple but neat chemistry and the electrons go around, provide your current. If I, I lecture quite a lot to young people, including teenagers, and if I want to show to them the absolutely vital importance of science I point to this, because we couldn't have mobile phones or laptops without the batteries that were developed by goodness technology and since people of that age can't imagine life without phones or laptops it really brings it home to them. The other thing I want to say is I was actually around when this key discovery was made I was a research fellow, working in the chemistry department in the University of Oxford I knew people in Goodenough's group, who were working on this I wasn't involved. It was very nice it is a really neat piece of science. Nobody appreciated the impact this would have the impact it would have on consumer electronics so a beautiful example of how basic science has huge impact that wasn't anticipated at the time. But the lithium cobalt oxide that started the whole thing off, a huge amount of work, again very very nice science around the world on trying to there are some disadvantages of this cobalt oxide cathode trying to get improved cathode materials transition metal ops, I'll just give you one example, again pioneered by John Goodenough for lithium phosphate, lovely material, and one of my colleagues Cycle Islam at the University of Bath now the University of Oxford has done elegant computer modelling work, which allows us to understand why this works so well. So as batteries again an area where we need the whole battery area needs more basic science, it needs more basic science for the batteries used in transport and it needs unquestionably more basic science for batteries used in large scale energy storage. A word here about sustainable aviation fuel because there's growing discussion of this, it's a key topic of interest, lots of proposed alternative fuels. There's a lot to be considered here, we need to think about safety. We need to think about airport handling of the fuel, and then just some kind of economic aspect. A new plane that's delivered today will fly for 2030 years. So there are legacy fuel requirements. So if we move to non hydrocarbon fuels, when the new airframes this protect many, many years to design and to be certified so there's some real issues here, then there is issues of energy density I'm putting energy density here, both by volume and by mass the main take home message from this is you look at the systems that are the fuels that have or the energy sources that have high energy density. They're all hydrocarbon based up on the top right hand side kerosene petro octane and energy density for particularly for long haul aircraft absolutely crucial and liquid hydrocarbons are the best option we need a new route to sustainable kerosene. This was the conclusion of a raw society policy briefing, published about a couple of years ago I commit that available for those of you interested, but again, we need more basic science. So I'm a little snippet of science, which is work that I've been involved in. And this is towards sustainable nitrogen fixation. Now what do we do at present we use. I'm trying to book for the physicists of an issue to impose all this chemistry on you. But this is pretty simple chemistry. We use the harbor boss process now this was an absolute landmark in catalytic science essentially what the harbor boss does it catalyzes the reaction between nitrogen and hydrogen to make ammonia and once you've got ammonia you fix nitrogen gone you go make fertilizers, or whatever. Now if you want another here is another of my impact of vital impact to science. This is a correct statistic that about the nutritional requirements are something like half the world's population of the global population are dependent on nitrogen fixed by the harbor boss process. So quite honestly, if we didn't have this catalytic technology, we simply couldn't support the current global population with reasonable nutrition so absolutely crucial and we now understand how this happens very, very, very well. It requires really intense conditions you need high temperature, you need high pressure, it consumes a lot of energy. So we want to move away, want to try and find something else that will do this that doesn't require, although it's been absolutely vital for the world over the last 100 years. We need to try at least partially move away. Why is it so difficult. It's so difficult because it's absolutely brute force I sometimes refer to it as sledgehammer chemistry. What happens we know the mechanism now very well. The first thing you have to do is to break this nitrogen into molecule into two nitrogen atoms. And the nitrogen molecule is the cell I'll finish in a minute is the strongest bonding chemistry. So you're really fighting against basic chemistry here. Now what we've done we moved away from that. This is a catalyst developed by some of my colleagues and we now understand how it works. What this does is allows you to start adding hydrogen atoms before you break that bond and you can do it under much minor conditions. So again, not at all industrial processing basic science that hopefully will make a big difference this hugely important area. I'm not going to have run out of time so I'm not going to say much about life cycle analysis, except that it's absolutely vital when you're talking about processes to look at all the aspects environmental, economic and social benefits. I just want to final reflections. What how do we respond to the basic scientific challenges. We need to use the latest techniques and infrastructure all the latest developments that science can give us. We need to use all the digital capabilities and that is a question we're going to grow, then we need to collaborate and coordinate we need to address these scientific community needs to work globally to face up to these challenges, and then another final reflections. We spent a huge amount of time thinking and responding as we had to to the COVID challenge. COVID-19 recovery must be green and returning to the eye of peace key message, only a low carbon recovery can benefit generate the co benefits for social equity, the environment and human health. Well, finally, many thanks to a lot of people who contributed this work. I particularly like to just draw attention to last to Peter McGrath and Giovanni Ultilani, who helped me put this talk together and helped me highlight the relevant work of the IAP. And thank you again for listening sorry if I've overrun and here is just more contact information for the IAP. Thanks very much. Thank you sir. You're perfectly in time. So now we travel to Thailand to Bangkok to meet who the Nature magazine listed as the rising star. Six years ago. She's an expert in solar driven energy conversion, a bright and sharp mind. Absolutely brilliant scientist. So I want to introduce Pachanita Samyongkit from the University of Sri Lanka, who will try to tell us a bit about her expectations and how the research does can contribute to putting the renewable energy in the forefront of the future energy landscape. So the state is yours, Professor. Thank you very much for the nice introduction and thank you for the kind invitation from ICDP to me to join such a special event. And it's always my pleasure to have a chance to contribute in the ICDP stage. And today I am, my task is to point out to you how the importance of the basic science in addressing the global energy crisis. And I will introduce myself a little bit more shortly in a later slide but Hang on. Sorry. I cannot click my slide. Okay. So now let me start with this slide and because everyone realize now that the world are now suffering from the consequences from the global warming and many, many countries in the world are committed to to the collaboration in the global level to reduce the carbon emission under the Paris Agreement. And the goal is quite aggressive. We would like to reduce the carbon dioxide on carbon emission at least by 40% before 2030, which is not far away from now and by 100% before 2015, which is very quite difficult. Everyone knows that. And all the pressure doesn't doesn't come to only the society but the industry. They have to consider a lot how to invest and but they cannot avoid that because now the strict regulation is coming. The trading, the carbon trading, carbon tax coming, how can they do under the platform, the profit oriented platform. And but anyway, in talking in the positive side, this is a great opportunity to create a partnership between all the stakeholders, not only industry sectors, but also with the climate change organization and the technology developer like the scientists like us. Okay, so I myself am a scientist, I'm a chemist, focusing on the synthesis of organic material for photo induced and like how Wester and electrochemical conversion for the green energy production. And now I'm working on the CO2 conversion. And I can say that I'm just like many scientists who want to use advanced material, who want to use the high resolution methods measurement and all kind of technique to make everything perfect. But what interesting car in my life is just recently just last year I was invited to to be a part of the board member or as the independent director in the one of the leading company, energy company in Thailand, named one full power company limited. And this company is a subsidiary of the coal fire company. You know they didn't know that they know that they have to move forward in the renewable energy regime. And they now produce and distribute electricity, both from thermal power generation, and also renewable power generation. And you can see in this game that they try to put so a lot of effort and intention in expand that business in the renewable energy part, like solar technology, energy storage, mobility. And they also have a lot of projects involved in concerning the smart city, energy management and energy training. And it's kind of open my mind, my eyes a lot because by working with them, I can see a lot of motivation from the industry sector, but at the same time the concern on the investing in the new technology. And I, it's not easy for the basic scientists like me to, to, to give the comments, because I know that in terms in on the product frontier technology, or we can do everything. But when I have to give the comment what is optimal, optimal is not the best optimal is most reasonable. What is the optimal option for, for them under this circumstance, they cannot only consider the efficiency, they have to consider the policy, they have to consider the readiness from the society from the customer from the market. And I have to do the simulation in my mind in my head what is the best for me. Right. So this is kind of a reason why my, I put my presentation in the tone like this. So you will, you can see that what I will present after this will come both from the scientist role, and also from the director role, because I want to, I think this is the same story if the technology technology developer or creator like us know what is the direction or in the, in the whole world on the, in the perspective of marketing or business. We will, we can just define the direction and the level of the technology that is impactful, and also practical for the industry sector. Okay, so let me move. Let me start with this summary to from my point of view about the scope of the energy conversion and storage towards the next, the net zero emission goal. Right. And what the basic science can do. So we all know that electricity can be produced from many sources, renewable or non renewable sources. Right and electricity can be transmitted through the line and store in the battery, which is the which of which technology is heavily explore and highly developed. Right. But at the same time, electricity can be stored in the chemical form, like hydrogen, we are the water splitting process. Right. And also hydrogen can be also obtained from the fossil fuel resources. And hydrogen itself can change its form back to give the electricity by fuel cell. Right. Everyone knows that I just give the walkthrough right and at the same time hydrogen as we should just talk about that. The hydrogen can be a major, major materials in the hydrogenation of conduct sign to produce the fuel product like hydro or hydrocarbon, which is the same compounds that we can get from the petroleum and fossil fuel resources. And with this fuel products, we don't need to change the combustion technology. Right. So it means that when we see like this, we can see that by we don't have to collect or to store the energy, only by battery, but we also own sorry. I can I forgot to mention about solar energy. It can also enhance the water splitting process and also be a part of accelerating the hydrogenation of the conduct sign right electricity as well. So, to store such a compound is very easy. We can use container, we can deliver it by pipe or all kinds of logistic or transportation way. Right. So, in this way, we can see that now is the way to to make the electricity low carbon. Right. So the energy storage technology becomes the end up or enabling technology to to drive the world to the low carbon society. Okay. And how basic science can help. We can help in increasing efficiency. We can help in electrification. How can we change everything. We know how to produce electricity but how can we make all the application rely on or use electricity as most efficiently and as much as possible so it can blend. We will provide a way for the renewable energy to blend in our everyday life. Right. And how to make the electricity decarbonize electricity generation, how to manage the carbon, how to make the electrical energy storage decarbonize to right so all of this needs the basic science and then I can show you now here. The, I show you now the consumption of the low carbon energy globally right so in this case, since I'm from Thailand, this is an Asian country, but anyway I will have some touch on the European and America, the cases in America as the role model because in the Europe in Europe they have to clear strategy on energy system integration and hydrogen. And in according to the best energy transition performance, the top nine from 10 countries from Europe, and they are now focusing on the decarbonization technology. So they still need technology, new technology to drive this. And in America, of course, the United States and Canada leads in this region, and they now focus on electrification and hydrogen technology at the same time they try to drive to encourage the company to invest in the renewable energy, carbon dioxide, carbon capture utilization and storage or CC us and bio energy. Meanwhile, for the Asian Asian country, we still face the lack of capital, we need more budget. We still need the clear and strong climbing action. We need this infrastructure regulatory renewable energy framework and implementation method, which is in the policy level to drive the sustainability sustainable transition in Asia. And now, in general, we now focus on the solar wind, coal, biomass and gas, not much on hydrogen except some country only, like Japan, South Korea and Australia, they are the leader. And we still have the gap between urban and rural areas due to the uneven distribution of resources. And this is because we rely, we are the region having the rapid growth in manufacturing and transportation sector. So, we don't produce our own technology much. And that's mean we have to rely pretty much on the existing energy technology. And if we look up the, the energy, the portion of the energy generation from fossil fuels nuclear and renewables energy. I put that slide for the world average. All right, we can see that, like some European country, especially Sweden, for example, they, they use very little proportion of the fossil fuel now they set up the net zero goal in 2045 and supporting policy from the government agency. Right. In Australia, they are the leader. Also, they are the leader, and they actually, but they still have the big proportion of non renewable energy. Excuse me, we lost you for one minute. Oh, I'm sorry. What should I do? Can I speak now? Yes, yes, just one minute. Okay, sorry about that. I will never know. Thank you for telling. So now I can say that in an Asian country, we still need to have a courage, have to encourage the many, all the country to catch up with usage of the renewable energy. Like, the good example is the Vietnam, like, you can see that they, although they are the small country. I'm sorry, what happened. They are small country but they set themselves as the hub of the Southeast Asia for wind power, for example, and now they create a lot of growth and income because of wind and the wind power, right. For the Australia, for example, they emphasize a lot on the growth of the renewable energy, but since they are the biggest coal exporter and consumption, they have a lot of resource on this and they have been long time rely on coal combustion to catch up to be net zero and to catch up with the same energy capacity. They have to still do a lot of work with this. And let's get back to the hydrogen. So in here, we, I can say that hydrogen is considered as the chemical twins of the electricity that can promote the decarbonization in many industrial sector. And because we don't need, well, we, we, we can collect it cheaply in any container and transmitted in a line in the liquidified form, for example. But to get the electricity back from them, we need a fuel cell. And that is a part of technology that the world needs to be promoted, right. So, there are so many kinds of hydrogen from many sources, right, but mainly we categorize it in three, according to the how clean it is. So green hydrogen is from the electricity, electrolysis of the water, right. So this is a chance to use the renewable energy or the clean energy to do that. And what we get is the pure hydrogen without any contamination from the carbon dioxide or any toxic gas, right. So the world now set it as a new challenging focus towards net zero goal. So many industry we I have talked with they still rely on blue hydrogen baby because this is easy to make, and it's still cheap. So at the moment, we still can rely on that, but not for long. It can be only the bridge to establish the hydrogen based ecosystem. What is the blue hydrogen. It comes from the gray hydrogen, which is hydrogen directly emitted. I'm sorry that the hydrogen that comes from the exhaustive from the combustion without doing anything you have the exhaustive gas, including hydrogen in there. But if we clean it up a little bit by using the carbon capturing technique, we will get that gas with the higher proportion of the hydrogen we call it blue hydrogen. So, oh, sorry. Can you still. Oops. Oh, no. How can this this, can you see it still hear me. We just have to, I mean to put your slides again because now we are reading your emails. Oh, I see. So, can you see my slide now. Yes, presentation mode and then it will be done. Right. Okay, I will continue. Okay. Um, so, um, for the hydrogen technology to upgrade the hydrogen to the green level, or to the cleaner type. We really rely on the CC us also. So hydrogen technology and CC us technology cannot leave from each other. Okay, I think you can see from this presentation. And the accuracy growth of the hydrogen technology and the low emission technology can be clearly seen by the growth of the mobility business. And we know that now the many car company, they produce the EV, right, electric vehicle based on by using the battery high performance battery, and some of them use the both battery and oil. So the hybrid kind of TV is very popular at the moment as well they have the highest sale last year. But for the long distance and heavy transportation, the hydrogen gift have a big advantage because of the high energy density. And this is the, it gives the opportunity of many industry and also country to catch up their economies in the vehicle market. China in Asia among many Asian country is the big leader. And we, we can see in this plot that they, they have a very successful very big market share in the EV, both battery EV and hybrid EV and Europe and the US it has a lot already as well. And their success, the success that China has for the big, the battery EV market motivate themselves to, to enhance the hydrogen adoption in that country. And we can see in this plot that the Asian also take the biggest market share in the fuel cell EV as well. And not only China, but also Japan they position itself as the hub of the fuel cell technology. And just recently, the South Korea like take over the fuel cell EV market already, and they set up the clear hydrogen economy in that country. Both of these countries they keep a lot of incentive, higher incentive for the fuel cell EV than the battery EV in that country. Okay, and this is the many application of the hydrogen and with the, the drive from the carbon capture utilization and storage, the, the, we can upgrade the hydrogen from blue and gray to the green level, or to make the blue hydrogen more competitive in terms of course. Right. And as I said the country like Australia, Japan, they put a lot of for a lot of it for in production for Australia they want to export, because they have a lot of renewable energy infrastructure and land. But Japan, they don't have a lot of land but they try to cope with their own domestic needs and try to import it. And now they are the leader of the usage of the liquidified hydrogen. So, can you put your slide in presentation mode. Okay, yes. Did I, I did not right. I can see my, let me start share and share again. I always see myself as a presentation mode all the time. But I don't know why. Can you see it now as a presentation mode. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. So for South Korea, they, they are, they launched the world first hydrogen act focusing on the hydrogen vehicle charging station infrastructure, and also define the safety requirement and the role of the government agency. And they now have three, they start the launch three hydrogen power city already, they have our hydrogen production distribution in this city and they plan to expand it up to 30% of the city and county and towns in in that country by 2040. This is very, very aggressive plan but it's happening already in our Asian country, China, of course they are also doing the same with many provinces. And if you follow the news, couple years ago, many years ago actually they, they launched the first hydrogen fuel cell trend. And that is the one of the heavy transportation for the mass transportation. And in terms of technology, the request. Yeah, here I would like to show you why we have some of the known technology in the market to produce all three types of hydrogen. We need lots more. We need to still need to increase electric electrolysis capacity to cope up with the surplus electricity from the renewable energy. We have to reduce the price of the material, try to find another option, which is cheaper, and also easier to produce. Okay, and also find another technology to use renewable energy to produce green hydrogen. And if you can see in this picture, you can see that under the right hand side, this is a technology which is launched in, in deploy already in the market but we have a lot more in the pipeline, making by, by us right and we, there are all pretend have high potential we can push this through the valley of death, try to make it work in the market. Right so in, in, in Asia, the situation, we have the, a lot of patent activity, but the major activity is led by Chinese patents office. And by number of the patent files nowadays Asia Pacific as the highest number among other regions in the world, of course led by China, but it shows the how aggressive we are. And also, I want to point out that the most of the patent application comes from the materials and chemicals company. So it means that material is kind of the key for the technology to, to drive the technology to, to the market. Anyway, we cannot do anything without the policy drive. We need the collaboration by all from all stakeholders like government energy company and also scientists like us to participate in the hydrogen supply chain. And also among, not only by this state among these stakeholders but among many countries as well the good example we can see from Australia that collaborate with Japan and South Korea to create the supply lines of the hydrogen. So for the CC us scheme is now still the big challenge in terms of course, because they said that it's just like something that they planned the energy production plan have to pay extra to have it. So now they have, they have to think if it is worth doing right to cope up with this, we have to. maximize the use of conduct sign to create the value. So the CCS will become more cost effective. Right, this is simple equation. And if we can solve the problem on the CCS uncertainty and operation risk, we can help to reduce the production cost of the hydrogen. Okay, and the new technology focus nowadays is the direct at capture. So they use CC to CC us to capture the cognitive side in the atmosphere. And because this is the way to towards not only the net zero emission but negative emission. Right. So, this is the frontier technology that created by basic science for this conduct side have plenty of application we can go for, but the global challenge, not only in Asia or in Europe, the technology commercial and social readiness level. Okay, so we have to to make this all together not only the technology but how how ready the commercial, the market is and the society is we have to take care of, and also driving policy and public awareness. Right. And for the high TRL or technology readiness level technology, we, we need, we need the policy and support or subsidizing policy to do to drive the industry to use it. Okay, and as I said, now, the big question for the CCS scheme is, this is worth doing. And if they invest to pay if they pay to, to have the CCS unit in the in the plan in the industry and short later, the green hydrogen becomes so cheap and cost effective. So, then this make the user like industry hesitate to adopt the CCS in the production, but the way to go is now is a trend that the many countries try to encourage to create the hubs among the many industrial sector in the ecosystem to reduce the cost and it just not it's not really just like share the cost and operation risk together. So that is the way to go for the world. But anyway, we need the government and the stakeholder to accelerate this in the short term and also support the CCS and green hydrogen in the long term. Right in Europe and North America, they start already, Asia need to catch up, we can, we might be slow, but, but we cannot, we cannot wait for too long, we will see it in a couple years or not more than 10 years later. And some of the country in the region start already like Australia, China, Japan, they are a good model. And, of course, many other country in Asia will, will try to do the same. And for sure. Now, carbon, carbon capture market is already active, because there are this very suitable for refinery and upstream fuel production in the big country like China and India. All right, so I hope that I can give you, I can reflect you the importance of the basic science to improve energy efficiency, decarbonize electricity, energy storage, electrification approach, and carbon dioxide management. And, and not only from the point of view from scientists, but also from the, the, the one who have to work with the industry at the moment now. And not only for to save our environment and to, to encourage the business growth, but also to, to, to make the world sustainable, to make the livable community and to have the better quality. And I thank you for your interest and I'm sorry for the typical hiccups in my presentation. Thank you. So thank you very much, Professor. You forgot to introduce yourself, as you said, you promised at the beginning. Now it's open to questions. So feel free to drop your questions in the chat for those who are online. Question can be addressed to the panelists, also from Dr. Amal from UNESCO, or to Monsieur Spiro, the Pupari. So, it's up to you. Yes. So just to break the ISP, I start with the first question. And so thank you very much to all these presenters who gave very nice aspects of the issue of energy and the link between energy and development and basic sciences. But one issue has only been mentioned on the sideline in the last talk, in fact, and that is the question of intellectual property. Because as soon as new things are invented, people tend to get patents on them and so on. And especially in an audience like here where we're also thinking a lot about developing countries. I'm often wondering, is this something good or bad? Is this hindering, in fact, the development and the use of basic science advances that people immediately claim intellectual property on discoveries, which might come. So, I would like to have a bit an opinion of people here on, if, say, for Africa or for Asia, it is good or bad if new discoveries are immediately patented and become property. Thanks. So anyone would like to take the question? Professor Katlow. Well, I'm sorry, I don't know for any great. So it's an excellent question. And it means the same kind of dilemma that's faced with drug discovery. But on the one hand, preserving, protecting, sorry, intellectual property is an incentive, particularly for the involvement of commercial organization. And it means that we will need very extensive involvement of industry in the things we've been talking about today. So you do need, particularly when you're talking about industry, you do need the incentive, but then when there's new technology, which is developed that can alter lives is restrictive because of intellectual property does become a problem. That's very where governments really need to get and get involved. So I'm not really offering an answer, but I'm really saying that I think you are highlighting an important issue, but there isn't a simple answer. So particularly if we want, as we will need investment and involvement from large, small and large scale industry, but I don't know whether Pachanita has got some thoughts on that. If I may share, I would say that it depends on the business model of that kind of that type of technology. So for example, if I invent something discover something and I don't know how to use it, and I patented. And then one day someone saw it and asked me, like, they want to develop it further so they can make money. And if I said, oh, yeah, I make it cheap for you. So it means that I allow the technology to be transferred and I will help them. So that that that is okay. I think that to this kind of fair for the inventor, like, and then it can be kind of the stage that inventor can see that they will not be kicked off from the loop. If that will make the progress happen, it's okay, the development happen, it's okay, but if I say that, oh, I can say this is very valuable, right? And then the industry really need it, right? I make it very expensive. So it's not feasible, right? So I don't think the industry will buy it. And then it will die there. And that is also the part that the scientists may have to think of. They might want to, I believe that they might want to see that technology to be used, rather than to hack it on the bed at home, something like that. So it is the balance, I would say, like it may be okay, it may make it clear when you work together, but it may be not okay if you try to squeeze it in your in your arms all the time. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, we're not really offering solutions, but I think you have raised something that will need discussion. You need to offer more solutions than I did. Oh, just example. Are you satisfied? There's something in the chat, I think. Yes, so. Before I take you, they say, I mean, they say, oh God, I zoomed us. I cannot read. Oh, so there's a bingo who is actually pessimistic about being able to decarbonize in time to curb the worst climate change effect or societal collapse. I'm just asking. He's pessimistic about the fact that the mission will stop the rise. And he thinks that as a result of the fact that energy company will not have sufficient insensitive incentive to stop using fossing seal, and that government seems unable to resist the lobbying effort. And he thinks that the emission will continue and then more fossil fuel projects are planned in the future. In contradiction to see you to pledge. So how do you see this contradiction? Oh, Dr. Pachanita, I will start with you trying to answer this question because you have been working more closely to the industry. What do you think? I try to formulate my, the answer in the neutral way, because if we talk about government, people say the government never have never done enough, right. And maybe it's true. And what I can see, at least from from my experience in Asia. Because we don't have the aggressive action plan and solid, like we don't consult consolidate the whole scheme. I can see the lead from the industry really. They cannot wait. They have to, as I put in the first slide, I put that industry got the pressure. I don't, because I don't see that the government got a lot of pressure in action, because they claim that by 2050, the country will be like this. But they cannot control because it and they did not have enough money to make it all for the whole country as well. So, the drive, I can say the drive might come from industry, but the policy making part and support from the public have to be created by the government. Yeah. And I agree with you that I don't, I agree that there is some contradiction in this. But the country who can make the collaboration between the government and the private sector, most productive or most fruitful will see the good consequence from this. Yeah, because the government has, they cannot, I understand them to, they cannot put one rule for the whole country. And the private sector has to do this because of the profit. Yes, but they need the cost, but the cost can be subsidized or can be supported by some policy. So they have to drive together but in by different tools. I don't know if I answered the question, but this is my from my point of view. Could I just comment briefly. Sure. I mean, I agree with what I just said. I think I'm not as, I mean, I understand the question. I'm not as pessimistic about the energy companies. The energy companies want to be there for the long term. They are not fools. They know that in the long term, they will have to replace fossil fuels as a source of energy by renewables. And I think a lot of them will want to be leaders in renewables so I do understand the question and, but I don't think we should be quite as pessimistic we need to engage with them. I think it needs to be absolutely clear that what government policy makers and society want is this transformation, but they will these big companies will want to be there in 50 years time. But you know I do, we just want to repeat, I do understand the concerns expressed in that question. I'm not a scientist so I'm going to make an observation as an administrative member of staff. So, what I seem to have understood from this afternoon's talk is that maybe we need more basic science researchers to sit on the decision making table and actually get into politics somehow. And then, you know, maybe they will be able to make decisions themselves, you know, and convince the people that they are working with and, but maybe I'm saying something very, very obvious. If I was your professor I had to grade you I would have given you 100 over 100. So, that's the great solution. I don't think it's maybe it's not that easy but you know, some, some scientists might decide to sacrifice some of their research time and work for this global energy crisis or for a sustainable development them might actually take place if they are there. This is to just to comment quickly. This is what I showed in the last slide when I gave overview of Africa. So there the need is urgent right, you need scientists usually scientists try to, I mean, get away from decision making sphere but this is impossible you cannot achieve development if you don't talk with decision makers in many countries, even the president doesn't have a, I mean, a scientific council doesn't exist in many countries this is why taking decision about science is very difficult. If you ask this big professor from Cameroon here, I can ask to Professor Waffle what is the budget dedicated to science in Cameroon. I'm not sure it's even 0.001% of the gross domestic product. So, I mean, the way we define the science policy have to change drastically. I mentioned it, for example, Kagami was here, and he understood what is the use of basic science, he was sitting here, and then people like Sandro Scandolo or Fernando Covedo could advise him about what to do. And then he's doing it in Rwanda and then Rwanda is booming. So you're absolutely right. So how to get to the decision makers. It's quite impossible in many countries. Well, isn't this also where organizations like the IAP have got a role to play, linking the scientific community, we hope to policy formulation. I would not agree with you that we want to get an individual scientist actually some going into political careers. Organizations like IAP. If I can you hear me, if I may say something, I agree with you Richard that academies have a great role to play to advise governments. And this is this might not be enough. This is Michelle Spiro speaking. Sorry. Sorry. Do you hear me. Yes. Okay. And I want to also to emphasize that there is already a step in that direction at the global level, which was started by the climate phase, climate scientists by setting up the IPCC's on climate change, which was explicitly to connect scientists to governments. And this is repeated again with biodiversity now there is the IPBES. Maybe maybe for energy we wouldn't mean to have such a kind of panel where governments and scientists could discuss issues connected to the global change for energy producing and energy use. I agree that this is lacking because it is behind the time it but it's a specific issue the energy which is a major issue. And probably we will need a kind of panel and meet where scientists and politicians can meet together to see the possible approach for solutions for addressing the global energy crisis. Yeah, thank you. It needs to be at a global level from just as an individual nation state or even regional level. I have a question from Karim. Oh, hello. Thank you very much. So as the issue is developing countries, I mean, myself as a potential consumer of mother nature in developing countries, I think that there are plenty of issues like failures within the energy system. The, the, the need to be handled that the energy system are open to the environment and they are open to society. So the environment they are exposed to natural disasters in society they are exposed to men made disasters like cyber attacks like, you know, industrial failures we've seen the case in 1998 in New Zealand, where six weeks of failure within the system where we're quite heavy for a city like Oakland let alone thinking about Cameron or, or do I know. Yeah, I'm thinking whether basic sciences is within the community you guys are thinking of building from the right start a resilient system. And if you can comment on this. Karim, I didn't hear the last. I wasn't quite sure what was talking about the resilient energy system from the right beginning. I mean that would minimize the failures. I'm not talking about resiliency in terms of it seems like I mean the interaction between the size and the policies hopeless. We have to to two types of evidence is I mean scientific thinking and contextual. So, I mean if you would like to avoid failures within the system take. I don't know take Thailand for instance I wonder whether the power plant that they have has a system by which if there is any flood or whatsoever the system would I mean you're absolutely right building in resilience into the system is a key importance and that is, is I think, I mean, I think you mentioned this step down is one of the challenges when you become dependent, they're increasingly dependent on renewables. Want to comment. Okay, it's coming tank. Yeah, I have. Even if you leave aside the political difficulties of making moving to renewable energy I just want to ask a technical question to you as a scientist. Sorry, what question you want to ask. So, leaving aside the question of political will and you know making governments to do move to renewable energy. I think that aside at the technical level I just want to ask if I understand roughly the numbers. Currently only 15% of the energy budget of the world comes from renewable energies and do you think it's a feasible. Is there a feasible, technically feasible road map to move 100% to. Is this a technical feasible. Is this a solution that is technically feasible and given the current state of renewable energy technology. Well, I'll pass it up and she actually talked more about the technology than I did. But I think it is feasible the point that I both I, and she and I were making is, we haven't got the technology now. This is why we need I think it's one of the most important things about this meeting. We need the basic science to give us the technology to allow us to do this in 30 years time. But I think it is a feasible ambition. Thank you. It'd be very good if I don't put you on the spot Pachanita but I mean you commented more about the range of technologies available. Yeah. If we look up our situation at the moment and see that one day, we will not need the renewable, the fossil fuel at all. It's sound, it looks really difficult. But I would say that actually I didn't mention in my presentation as well that why we are now talking about how to, how the basic science can contribute significantly in the energy crisis. Anyway, at this moment for, I don't know how many years but for a significant number of years, the fossil fuel and coal, which is known to be dirty, you know, has to be the backbone for why in this transition period. But the point is whether or not we will buy this time with improving the renewable energy seriously or not. If we know that the fossil fuel is polluted, we need it, we use it now, but we don't do anything at all. We will be so far from being to get that 100%. But if we start doing now, from my point of view, I think that 100% renewable energy can maybe able to be done only in some region. We will see in this generation, our generation, we will see some country can do that, but some countries so far away from being able to do that. They don't have even the budget to take care of the hunger in that country. How can they invest in that, right? But that is the integration of all the issue that one country have to focus on. So I think that anyway, we have to put this in their priority and do our best. And in COP26, for example, we talk in the very peaceful way that all the world will drive together, right? But at the same time, the developing, the developed country, the country which has developed energy scheme also feel or a little bit complain that hey, why we have to help the country which doesn't do anything, right? But the reason of not doing anything because we have many reasons, right? So I think the best is we try our best to do that. And in industry, quite often I can see that they want to see the catalog of the technology. The one of the public question is, do we have the catalog of the promising technology that we can choose? With price, payback point, something feasibility study, and the scientist doesn't have that, right? We created a frontier technology, we said that oh, it's promising, it's best, but who will calculate that? So that is the huge gap and this is a big part of the value of that, the value update that I mentioned in my presentation that, for example, the first person from the audience talked about the IP. That is a little part of that. We have the IP coverage or not. It's not a big issue as how to transfer that technology to the real use. That is the bigger gap between academic and industry that we also, as a scientist, I think we can do, we can help a lot in this. And the rest has to rely on the government and other stakeholders as well. So, for example, we can, I see many good examples from the, because I was graduated from Germany, right? So I see the good example from the white paper, right? That is made by academic and industry sectors. So they come and discuss together and then analyze the supply chain of particular technology and to analyze whether or not the country is ready, or if we are, or if we should do it now, where is the supplier and access to do that? I think that means the good practice many countries should have. Just a quick additional comment that as well as renewables, we do have nuclear, which is not renewable, but which is low carbon, and that shouldn't be forgotten. No, actually, my question was exactly that. Do you see any role for nuclear? Is it, can we actually reach the no carbon? I can't with the mask on. Can we, can do you think that nuclear will continue to play a role if you want to go to low, no carbon goals by 2050, or do you think it's, you know, what is the, in the mix, what do you see the role? In my view, nuclear should continue to play a role. It's a low carbon technology. It's not, this will be in an extended transition period, but nuclear for providing a big, appreciable contribution to the electricity base load. I think will continue to play a role. Another question, comment. I have a question to our friends in Paris, both to Michelle and Amal. Michelle, I start with you. So, I've seen that among the supports of this international year for basic science. I find institutions, research centers, or academia, and so on and so forth. So what about your interactions with government, right? How do you think government can assimilate, right, the plan that you have behind. By the way, I'm a good friend of Luke Alamang, so I know a bit how it started, how you looked for, for partners. So, how do you intend, let's say, to make states, right, to join you in celebrating this year, not only to celebrate, but to implement what you have in mind in your agenda. Sorry. Can you hear me? Yes. So, first, the process to get to the internationally proclaimed was in close relationship with many, many states. It started at UNESCO in 2019, where project was brought to the UNESCO agenda for the recommendation for an international year to be proclaimed by the United Nations. This was brought up by Jordan, Russia, Vietnam, Nigeria, and some others, and was unanimously endorsed by all UNESCO members. There was a lively discussion where delegation at UNESCO were supporting this project. Then it came to the United Nations, the project, so the decision for the proclamation was brought on the agenda of the United Nations General Assembly by Honduras, Honduras, the Honduras Republic. But was co-sponsored by 30 states, 30 countries. Most of them were developing countries, and not the developed ones. Only Japan was one of the developed countries sponsoring the resolution. But finally, it was endorsed unanimously also as the United Nations General Assembly on December 2. So all the process to get to the proclamation of the international year was in connection between the steering committee, so the unions and the academies, and the governments, first the delegations at UNESCO and then the delegations at the UN General Assembly. By the way, we are still in mind to organize a side event at the UN General Assembly during this international year, whether we will be able to do that or not. I don't know yet, but we are in mind to organize during this international year also a side event. We are also in mind to push for a decade after this international year, because it's not only during one year that we will be able to achieve the goals that we have in mind, which were repeated by Amal Kasri to be more inclusive, to be more collaborative for sustainable development, to have a multicultural dialogue, to give a role to empower women and diversity in this adventure, to promote open science, because as Richard said, for this goal which is a global goal, we need to be open. I understand that the private sector needs to make some profit, so we have a bit of compromise to find to be more efficient, we need to be collaborative, but to develop an incentive to be, we need to associate the private sector and the incentive might be patented, so we have to discuss this during the international year. But it is clear that we will try to set up some indicators, how much basic sciences could be more funded, could serve education and could be mobilized for the sustainable goal agenda. So we will set up indicators and in order to see the progression of these indicators, we will try to promote a decade of basic sciences, as it was done by the way for OCEAN, so there is already an example that we can follow. So if we succeed to get this side event at OCEAN and to get a decade for basic sciences, we will certainly use this to promote the more connection between scientists and governments, taking the examples as I said of IPCC, which is doing very well, of now for biodiversity also, but we need to have other examples in other sectors of the sustainable goal development agenda to set up a more connection between the scientists and the governments. So this is one of the objectives of the international year of basic sciences for sustainable development. Thank you very much. So just Dr. Cassidy, I just want to comment from you, just one minute because we close in five minutes. So I mean UNESCO is involved in capacity building a lot on the continent, right? But if you, I mean, if you observe the African continent, we need more than that. For example, we need one million more scientists like PhD, PhD trend, right, young scientists on the continent to achieve the SDD goals. So how do you think that UNESCO can help via science engagement, for example, right, to create more vocation for science because you see the continent is more immediate innovation driven, right? So how do you think you can help? Is there any agenda for that? Yes, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much for the question. So yes, of course, I mean Africa is a priority for UNESCO. And we have a lot of programs through our work plans for this biennium are actually indicating Africa as a priority for us. Currently, I mean the International Year of Basic Science is a great opportunity to establish new initiatives in Africa. And in fact, we are working on two initiatives right now, was negotiating with several partners. And one of them was the CNRS here in France with the University, Buran University in Nancy, in order to equip researchers and scientists in Africa with the single crystal X-ray diffractometers, which are very sophisticated and very extensive techniques and we will train them in remote, how to use this remotely. And actually, this is through open labs. This is just an example. I'm mentioning this as an example. And we have another initiative as well. And we will do both of those and hopefully more under the umbrella of the International Year. So you will use this chance for this. And just commenting on your first question, thanks, Michelle, for answering. We will take the opportunity of the opening ceremony to bring actually the policymakers. So you mentioned you asked about how the government can be involved in this. And we will bring the ministers of science and technology together with the scientists in order to discuss with them how the policy can be developed in each country in order to support and raise the profile of basic science. And of course, these initiatives that I mentioned will be also used as examples during the discussions in order to convince or at least understand how the government or what they think about in order to raise the profile of better sciences in Africa. We have already confirmed ministers from several parts around the world. And Africa, of course, will be heavily involved by scientists and policymakers from Africa. So, yes, we have, we have a lot of ambitious plans for Africa and we hope we can build also on some of the achievements through the previous international years like International Year of Crystallography and International Year of Life that were actually previous achievements that we are trying to build on right now. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Any other comment? We are closing soon so, Atish, you want to give the closing remarks. Thank you. Okay, so thank you very much, Professor Patel and Professor Thamean Kit for this very informative session. I think it's a good way to start the ICTP's participation in the International Year. I want to also tell you that within the context of this International Year, the next event will be held in 23rd of June. It will be a session on artificial intelligence for detection and attribution of climate extremes. So I hope to see you all of you then. And please join us now for some light refreshments on the terrace. Thank you very much.