The 8th annual SRA-E Benelux conference: “Balancing risks: the role of science, society and policy in climate and energy transition"
Date: October 22nd 2024
Location: Ministry of Climate and Green Growth, The Hague, Netherlands
Join us for dynamic discussions and insights aimed at shaping a sustainable and climatere-resilient future
Designing effective policy strategies to address the complexities of climate change and energy transitions requires both scientific insights and societal engagement. By fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, between academics, practitioners and policymakers, we can develop holistic solutions that address the multifaceted challenges posed by climate change and energy transitions.
The conference aims to bring together researchers, academics, practitioners, and policy makers engaged in risk analysis. It also aims to promote risk research, and knowledge and understanding of risk analysis concepts and applications within the Benelux countries and beyond.
SRA Europe Benelux invites all contributions related to risk, e.g., risk analysis, risk management, risk governance, risk ethics, risk perception, and risk communication. We particularly welcome contributions that focus on risk perception in relation to climate and energy transitions. Contributions from other domains are also welcome.
Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:
- Science-policy interface for climate policy
- Climate action planning, risk and impact assessment
- Energy transitions: impacts and sustainable pathways
- The social dimensions of risk and resilience
- Perception of climate and energy risks
- Risk communication
- Climate risk, ethics and justice
- Risk governance
- Risk decision making
- Behavioural change interventions
- Public participation
- Knowledge contestations
- Dealing with uncertainty
Confirmed keynote and panel speakers:
Benjamin K. Sovacool, Director of the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS)
Ortwin Renn, Research Institute for Sustainability (RIFS), Potsdam
Laetitia Ouillet, Senior Associate Erisk Group and podcastmaker FD/Energeia on the energy transition
Michel Heijdra, Director General for Climate & Energy, The Hague
Abstract submission
Abstracts (max. 500 words or 1 page, single spaced, 12 pt, Times Roman) and queries can be submitted to [email protected]
Dates
Abstract submission deadline: 28 July 2024 (CLOSED)
Notification of acceptance: 7 August 2024
Abstract submission deadline for posters: 4 September 2024 (CLOSED)
Notification of acceptance for posters: 6 September 2024
Registration deadline for presenters in parallel sessions: 6 September 2024
Registration deadline for all who participants (including poster presenters): 30 September 2024
Registration
Registration to the conference can be done via the following website: https://www.aanmelder.nl/158160/registration. The registration fee is 25 euro.
Program (see for details on the keynotes and parallel sessions below)
09:15-10:00 | Registration and coffee
10:00-10:10 | Welcome address Ministry of Climate and Green Growth
10:10-10:15 | Welcome address SRA-E Benelux
Nicole Huijts
10:15-11:00 | Keynote 1. The low-carbon risk society: Dilemmas of risk-risk tradeoffs in energy transitions
Benjamin Sovacool
11:00-11:15 | Coffee break
11:15-12:00 | Panel Discussion. The relation between Science, Policy and Society: implications for the Climate and Energy Transition
Benjamin Sovacool, Laetitia Ouillet, Michel Heijdra
12:00-13:00 | Lunch
13:00-14:00 | Parallel session 1
14:00-14:15 | Break
14:15-15:15 | Parallel session 2
15:15-15:45 | Break
15:45-16:30 | Keynote 2. Reaching net-zero emissions: challenges for inclusive risk governance
Ortwin Renn
16:30-16:45 | SRA Benelux business meeting
16:30 | Drinks and poster session
Keynotes
Keynote 1. Benjamin Sovacool. The low-carbon risk society: Dilemmas of risk-risk tradeoffs in energy transitions
As countries and communities grapple with climate change, they seek to rapidly decarbonize their economies and cultures. A low-carbon future will likely depend on more distributed solar energy, the electrification of mobility, and more efficient homes and buildings. But what emergent risks are evident within this low-carbon society? This presentation addresses the challenge of risk-risk tradeoffs by their category, medium of distribution, and type. It presents some examples to apply a typology of Risk Offsets, Risk Substitution, Risk Transfer, and Risk Transformation as a means for dealing with current complexities and challenges in risk management. In doing so, it calls for a more refined risk assessment that better accounts for decision-making considerations such as the magnitude or probability of risk, size of population exposed, certainty in risk estimation, severity of adverse outcome, distributional considerations, and the timing of risk impacts. It also summarizes emergent research gaps. Risk management in the context of climate action becomes a three-dimensional chess game of weighing risk transmission, risk mediums, and risk categories.
Keynote 2. Ortwin Renn. Reaching net-zero emissions: challenges for inclusive risk governance
Most nations in the world, including Germany and the Benelux nations, have launched legal initiatives for dealing with climate change and other pressing sustainability challenges. These initiatives include ambitious goals for limiting greenhouse emissions and reaching net zero latest in 2050. Advancing net-zero technologies in a democratic and plural society faces four major challenges. (1) how to combine open-ended participatory formats with the need to reach a fixed objective, i.e. net-zero emissions in a pre-defined time span; (2) how to integrate the concerns and requests from organized stakeholders, political parties, and the public at large represented by randomly selected citizens; (3) how to connect different governance levels from the community to the regional, to the state, to the global level and (4) how to include persons from minorities and marginalized groups in the proposed participatory forums and formats. The lecture will introduce some of the empirical results of our EU research project REAL-DEAL and suggest some potential solutions for these challenges, including narratives and participatory processes, with practical implications for the EU.
Panel discussion. The relation between Science, Policy and Society: implications for the Climate and Energy Transition
Society seems to disagree more and more with what the risks are and how we deal with them. The climate and energy transitions invoke different ideas among different stakeholders about what risks matter most, what policy should prioritize, and what risks need to be assessed. This poses huge conundrums for scientists, policy-makers and society when decisions still have to be made. In the current (legal) system, researchers provide policy makers with the insights or rationale in order to regulate risks. Society has the opportunity to object when regulations are published for consultation or in specific projects. For a long time, this triangle was (at least partially) accepted but that now seems to be changing. Both policy and science are increasingly questioned. This may not be a bad thing, as society is thus critically thinking about risk-related questions. But this also raises questions about trust, public values and defining reliable knowledge.
Additionally, the context has changed as we entered the new Information Age. While the internet and new media has had the positive effects of democratizing knowledge and giving visibility to marginalised voices, it has also had the negative effects of recasting fringe and unqualified scientific views as anti-establishment truth-tellers. Algorithms create echo chambers and artificial Intelligence (AI) blur the lines between truth, satire and outright disinformation. They amplify minor risks and further break down public trust in both science and the policy process. Politicization can also be a major threat to deliberative processes especially as the credibility of science and scientists increasingly come under attack.
The panel will discuss the relationship and interaction between science, policy and society, and explore how we can navigate this dynamic in the climate and energy transition. Transitions such as these are characterized by uncertainty and the need to act fast, which underlines the relevance of this discussion.
Parallel Sessions
Session 1.1 Panel on Redefining Climate Security and its Science-Policy Relevance: Human security dimensions of Climate Security
Chair: Jasper Verschuur
- Fragility/conflict dimensions of climate security (L. Birkman)
- Supply security dimensions of climate security (K. Rossi)
- Human security dimensions of climate security (J. Verschuur)
Session 1.2 Climate Change and Energy Transitions: Impacts on Vulnerable Groups
Chair: Angelo Jonas Imperiale
- Resilience and challenges: The Yaqui ethnic group facing the impacts of climate change (C. Cervantes Benavides, R. Mc Dermott, C. van den Berg)
- Living with floods: Urban flood resilience and sociospatial vulnerability in Cape Town (R. Dipura)
- The energy transition and the risk of increasing gender inequalities (C. Mirenda, S.Tagliacozzo, M. Cellini, L. Pisacane)
Session 1.3 Communicating Climate Risks
Chair: Peter de Vries
- Who influences our risk perceptions and climate change adaptation intentions? Using cross-country survey data to identify archetypes of social influence (T. Wagenblast, T. Filatova)
- The role of political parties in climate change communication: A comparative analysis of party manifestos for the European Parliament elections (M. Walgrave, P. Van Aelst)
- Flood risk perception and preparedness intention: The critical role of trust and risk communication in flood risk governance-evidence from Wuhan, China (L. Dong)
Session 2.1 Climate Policy
Chair: Frederic Bouder
- Risk disclosure and climate change risk reporting in central government: Assessing current practices in the UK and the Netherlands (E. Svetlova, T. Budding, S. Pazzi)
- Incorporating risk governance into EU energy governance: Lessons from recent geopolitical and geoeconomic challenges (S. Handke)
- Risk and uncertainty communication for the energy transition: lessons from the Netherlands (F. Bouder)
Session 2.2 Perception of Energy Technologies
Chair: Catrinel Turcanu
- Invisible and unknown: Perceptions about the hydrogen supply chain among local residents (C. Boomsma, J. Neuvel , M. Schuijff, M. Zonneveld)
- Tailoring biofuel risk communication: Insights from a target group analysis on risk perception, knowledge and information needs of German laypersons (R. Gimpel, K. Arning)
- Dynamics of public trust in nuclear energy (K. Broecks, C. van der Weerdt)
Session 2.3 Energy Justice
Chair: Catherine Wong
- The energy transition as a moral experiment (U. Pesch)
- Detecting energy injustices: climbing the ladder of “hidden morality” (N. van Uffelen)
- Designing a 3D Participatory planning methodology to investigate social acceptance of solar energy in Luxembourg (C. Jones, A. Skinner, T. Becker, M. Tarhini)
