The United Nation's Framework Convention for Climate Change signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. This instrument aims to fight against the heating of the planet and it reflexes the common and diverse responsibilities of all countries in order
to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions.

After a decade, we find ourselves again in the road which has to lead us to an agreement beyond 2012 and which places climate change in the centre of the international politics agenda (G-8, World Economic Forum, World Energy Council, United Nations...).

Climate change has changed from being an environmental risk to be a risk which has to be managed together with the other economical risks. Climate economics includes much more than associated cost to the CO2 emissions. It includes a management of the investment risks associated to carbon, as well as the mitigation of these risks due to adjustment. Climate change is also considered a risk for international security and therefore will promote the way towards global agreements creating political and investment instruments and which will help to create changes in the behaviour guidelines of the citizens.

In Expo CO2 - 2008, we will analyze the road beyond 2012. The European Council, after EXPO CO2 will present an ambitious package of measures where energy
and climate form a whole. It will include a revision and broadening of the present Emissions Trading Directive, which develops all the potential of the global climate economics and places Europe in the hard core of it, with a political leadership able to establish it in the centre of environmental innovation, technology, social
and political which will determine the politics and economics of the XXI century.

In the meeting we will also deal with issues such as the Carbon Budget, investment risks, the implications of the inclusion of air transport in the CO2 market, the clean carbon in energetic scenarios of the future, the potential development of the renewable energies and the contribution of the information technologies.

Climate change forms part of a global change. Both the Fundació Fòrum Ambiental and the Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona are convinced that the experts that participate in this third edition of Expo CO2 will contribute rigorous analysis and suggestive ideas to face them.

 

Jordi Ortega
Director Expo CO2

collaborators