IEEE has enhanced its standing as a trusted, impartial authority on the function of expertise in climate change mitigation and adaption. Final 12 months it grew to become the primary technical affiliation to be invited to a U.N. Conference of the Parties on Climate Change.
IEEE representatives participated in a number of classes at COP30, held from 11 to twenty November in Belém, Brazil. Greater than 56,000 delegates attended, together with policymakers, technologists, and representatives from business, finance, and growth businesses.
Following the convention, IEEE helped host the selective International Symposium on Achieving a Sustainable Climate. The International Telecommunication Union and IEEE hosted ISASC on 16 and 17 December at ITU’s headquarters in Geneva. Among the many greater than 100 individuals who attended had been U.N. company representatives, diplomats, senior leaders from academia, and consultants from authorities, business, nongovernment organizations, and requirements growth our bodies.
Power and energy professional Saifur Rahman, the 2023 IEEE president, led IEEE’s delegation at each occasions. Rahman is the speedy previous chair of IEEE’s Technology for a Sustainable Climate Matrix Organization, which coordinates, communicates, and amplifies the group’s efforts.
IEEE’s evolving function at COP
IEEE first attended a COP in 2021.
“Over successive COPs, IEEE’s function has developed from contributing particular person technical classes to being acknowledged as a trusted associate in local weather motion,” Rahman famous in a summary of COP30. “There’s [a] rising demand for engineering perception, not simply to debate applied sciences however [also] to assist design pathways for deployment, capacity-building, and long-term resilience.”
Becoming a member of Rahman at COP30 had been IEEE Fellow Claudio Canizares and IEEE Member Filipe Emídio Tôrres.
Canizares is a professor {of electrical} and computer engineering on the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada, and the chief director of the college’s sustainable energy institute.
Tôrres chairs the IEEE Centro-Norte Brasil Section (Brazil Chapter). An entrepreneur and a former professor, he’s pursuing a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering on the University of Brasilia. He additionally represented the IEEE Young Professionals group whereas attending the convention.
Within the Engineering for Climate Resilience: Water Planning, Energy Transition, Biodiversity session, Rahman confirmed a video from his 2024 go to to Shennongjia, China, the place he monitored a clean energy venture designed to guard endangered snub-nosed monkeys from human encroachment. The venture integrates renewable energy, which helps protect the forest and its wildlife.
Rahman additionally chaired a session on the Sustainable Development Goal Pavilion on balancing decarbonization efforts between industrialized and rising economies.
Moreover, he participated in a joint panel dialogue hosted by IEEE and the World Federation of Engineering Organizations on engineering methods for local weather resilience, together with energy transition and biodiversity.
Rahman, Canizares, and Tôrres took half in a session on clean-tech solutions for a sustainable climate, hosted by the International Youth Nuclear Congress. The subjects included fossil gasoline–free electrical energy for communications in distant areas and inexpensive electrical energy options for off-grid areas.
The three additionally joined a number of panels organized by the IYNC that addressed local weather resilience, profession pathways in sustainability, and a mentoring program.
“Over successive COPs, IEEE’s function has developed from contributing particular person technical classes to being acknowledged as a trusted associate in local weather motion.” —Saifur Rahman, 2023 IEEE president
The IYNC hosted the Voices of Transition: Including Pathways to a Clean Energy Future session, for which Tôrres and Rahman had been panelists. They mentioned the necessity to embrace underrepresented and marginalized teams, which regularly get ignored in tasks that convert communities to renewable power.
Rahman, Canizares, and Tôrres visited the COP Village, the place they met a number of of the 5,000 Indigenous leaders taking part within the convention and mentioned potential partnerships and collaborations. Local weather change has made the land the place the Indigenous individuals stay extra inclined to extreme droughts and wildfires, significantly within the Amazon area.
Rahman and Tôrres took a area journey to the Federal University of Para, the place they met a number of school members and college students and toured the LASSE engineering lab.
A significant expertise
Tôrres, who says representing IEEE at COP30 was transformative, wrote an in depth report concerning the occasion.
“The expertise reaffirmed my perception that engineering and expertise, when mixed with respect for cultural range, can play a important function in shaping a extra sustainable and equitable world,” he wrote. “It highlighted the significance of mixing cutting-edge technological options with Indigenous knowledge and cultural information to handle the local weather disaster.”
Rahman and Canizares give an outline of their COP30 experiences in an IEEE webinar.
“IEEE has a spot on the desk,” Rahman says within the video. “We need to showcase exterior our consolation zone what IEEE can do. We go to all these international occasions in order that our title turns into a well-known time period. We’re the primary technical affiliation group ever to go to COP and discuss engineering.”
Canizares added that IEEE is now collaborating intently with the United Nations.
“This is a vital interplay. And I feel, transferring ahead, IEEE will turn into extra related, significantly within the context of expertise deployment,” he stated. “As governments begin expertise deployments, they are going to see IEEE as a supplier of options.”
ISASC takeaways
Rahman was the overall chair of the ISASC occasion, which targeted on the supply and deployment of fresh power. Among the many presenters had been IEEE members together with Canizares, Paulina Chan, Surekha Deshmukh, Ashutosh Dutta, Tariq Durrani, Samina Husain, Bruce Kraemer, Bruno Meyer, Carlo Alberto Nucci, and Seizo Onoe.
Classes had been organized round six themes: power transition, info and communication expertise, financing, case research, technical standards, and public-private collaborations. An in depth report contains the discussions, insights, and alternatives recognized all through ISASC.
Listed here are some key takeaways.
- Though the expertise exists to transition to renewable power, most power grid techniques should not prepared. Deployment is more and more constrained by transmission bottlenecks, interconnection delays, allowing challenges, and system flexibility. There’s additionally a abilities scarcity.
- Vitality transition pathways have to be region-specific and may think about native sources, social circumstances, funding alternatives, and growth priorities.
- Data and communication applied sciences are central to climate mitigation options, regardless of rising issues about their environmental impression. Despite the fact that the applied sciences are utilized in useful methods, corresponding to early-warning techniques for natural disasters and sensible water administration, in addition they are driving the fast development of data centers for artificial intelligence purposes—which has elevated power costs and pushed up water demand.
- Technical requirements are a way of accelerating adoption, interoperability, and belief in green technology. There must be larger coordination amongst requirements growth organizations, significantly on the convergence of power techniques, info applied sciences, and AI. Fragmented requirements hinder interoperability. The shortage of technical requirements is a significant constraint on venture financing, limiting buyers’ confidence and slowing expertise deployment.
- Coaching and outreach efforts are essential for efficiently implementing requirements, particularly in creating areas. IEEE’s international membership and regional sections may be important channels to handle the wants.
A expertise evaluation software
As a part of ISASC, IEEE offered a expertise evaluation software prototype. The online-based platform is designed to assist policymakers, practitioners, and buyers examine expertise choices in opposition to local weather objectives.
The software can run a comparative evaluation of sustainable local weather applied sciences and combine publicly out there, expert-validated information.
IEEE will help the world meet its objectives
The ISASC report concluded that by connecting engineering experience with real-world deployment challenges, IEEE is working to translate international local weather objectives into measurable actions.
The discussions highlighted that the trail ahead lies much less in inventing new applied sciences and extra in aligning techniques to ship ones that exist already.
Summaries of COP30 and ISASC can be found on the IEEE Technology for a Sustainable Climate website.
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