Dr Andreas Rechkemmer, IHDP Executive Director
KlimaTech 2050
Berlin, November 12th 2008

With the growing realization that existing attempts to combat climate change are insufficient and that there is a mounting need for environmentally sound energy there is a growing emphasis on technological solutions. However are technological options alone the answer to our current and future climate and energy problems? To meet climate change challenges, technological solutions must be complimented by both behavioral and policy change.

With the increasing magnitude of environmental change associated with climate change how much change, whether it is social or political, is needed to correspond with the magnitude of challenges ahead? When meeting climate change challenges do we need to surpass social tipping points regarding large-scale behavioral changes? Societies can reduce emissions by 35-40% by 2030 without resorting to transformative changes in their prevailing economic or social arrangements. However, to achieve this every possible amount of reduction from existing systems must be acquired while still leaving the systems intact. It is here that a major role for the industry and technology exists. With greater emission reductions, especially those aimed for by the year 2050, more drastic changes may be needed, for example, initiating a shift in socio-technological regimes, which include lifestyle changes.

Single technical options alone are insufficient to tackle the magnitude and variety of climate change impacts and to meet the necessary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Technical pathways need to be varied and decentralized and centralized solutions must be intelligently combined to attain greatest overall efficiency. Importantly technological solutions can not work well without being coupled with behavioral change. To link technological and behavioral solutions integrative approaches are needed which simultaneously address technological innovation and behavioral changes. Behavioral change involved in addressing climate change is required from the individual to the societal level and it is important that sufficiency-orientated behavioral change is addressed. The most significant energy savings come from reductions in energy consumption levels. Finally to enable change it is important to embed behavioral solutions in the right political framework and to coordinate actions and interactions among multiple levels of governance.