While the pandemic revealed that quick change is possible, the recently published World Energy Outlook 2021 by the International Energy Agency concludes that the transition to renewables is not fast enough for net-zero targets. The energy transition has been underway for years but the demand for gas is rising as economic activity recovers from the pandemic. Power prices have reached record levels due to multi-year high oil and natural gas prices and energy. At the same time, investment in renewable energy needs to triple, says the International Energy Agency, to effectively fight climate change and control energy markets. How can we steer the transition and which direction do we want it to go?

In this month’s SDG Academy we dive into SDG 7 – affordable and clean energy. We start at the VU’s own energy center, where Rooske Gaal, energy coordinator at the VU Amsterdam, shares the history and future of this local energy production plant. This is followed by a panel discussion on the energy transition with Rooske Gaal, Dan Petrovics, PhD student focussed on the energy transition, and Phillip Pattberg, director of the Amsterdam Sustainability Institute.

Speakers:

Rooske Gaal has an engineering degree from TU Delft. As Energy-Coordinator she is the point of contact for the VU, VUm and externals on the topic of energy. Her focus is on lowering the energy use throughout the chain, from the energy generators at the CEE to the end user at the VU and VUmc.

Philip Pattberg is a full professor and chair of transnational environmental governance and policy at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU), The Netherlands. Philipp is also head of the environmental policy analysis department (EPA) and scientific director of the Amsterdam Sustainability Institute (ASI), the VU’s inter-faculty research institute on sustainability.

Daniel Petrovics is a Junior Researcher and PhD Candidate at the department of Environmental Policy Analysis at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM). His research interests in broad terms are related to urban sustainability, with a focus on the governance aspects and scaling of low-carbon initiatives targeting climate mitigation and adaptation in the urban setting. In his current research, he is working on the Horizon 2020 funded NEWCOMERS project, in particular focusing on polycentric governance arrangements of new clean energy communities. Closely linked, his PhD research focuses on the scaling mechanisms of energy communities.