The 17th International Scientific Conference “Energetika XXI: Economy, Policy, Ecology” took place on 21-22 November 2024 at the facilities of Saint Petersburg State University of Economics (UNECON) in hybrid format. The conference was dedicated to “Meeting the Climate Targets: the Importance of the BRICS+ countries”.
In the welcoming remark to the participants the Rector of UNECON Igor Maksimtsev has emphasised: «We have been holding the conference “Energetika 21” for the seventeenth time already and our conference has become a significant platform for discussion, addressing energy, environment and GHG issues. Despite of increasing global tensions we think that it is crucial to have a place for dialogue, especially on global issues such as reaching Paris agreement targets, international climate cooperation, technology transfer and others. We address to the role of BRICS + countries for a reason. Despite the fact that the world community has clearly established the final goal , there are various paths for its achievement.»
BRICS+ countries not only represent half of world population, but also a large variety of geographic location, status of industrialization, economic development and different approaches to address the climate problems. Fighting climate change, to reduce GHG emissions by staying within the remaining CO2 budget, can be based on various mix of technology options, taking into account the respective givens of countries.
The first day of the conference started with the introductory session on global issues. Speakers presented on different approaches to decarbonisation (Ralf Dickel, Independent Expert, Germany/ member of the Program Committee “Energetika 21”), on climate change and priorities in energy (Aleksey Morozov, The World Bank) and energy industry modernisation (Guo Bowei, Renmin University of China, Beijing ). Whinin the next two sessions speakers addressed technologies of final energy use (Jens Haubrock, Independent research expert, Bielefeld; Aleksey Belogoryev, Institute for Energy and Finance Foundation and Natalia Sarakhanova, UNECON), and discussed the ways to provide the necessary primary energy (Igor Bashmakov, Center for Energy Efficiency – XXI; Yulia Lyashik, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Martin Lambert, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Evgeniy Koloshkin, Gazprom). The first day finished with the Panel discussion on development and deployment of the relevant technologies.
The session of the second day was devoted to different approaches of BRICS+ countries to decarbonisation. Speakers from different countries shared their experience in decarbonisation. Aleksey Kobzev, Kazakh-German University (DKU), spoke about prospects for cooperation of BRICS partner countries in Central Asia, Raikhan Zhanbulatova, Eurasian National University, presented main features of decarbonisation policy in Kazakhstan. The Chinese experience in artificial intelligence application for energy conservation was shown by Grigory Yarygin, Saint Petersburg State University and the President of BRICS International Forum Purnima Anand shared her views on improvement of cooperation between countries within the green mission.
The final panel discussion, chaired by Dmitry Tikhomirov, VEB.RF, addressed various financing approaches. As in previous years “Energetika 21” has become a platform for an open discussion on the topics of common global interest.
