The Paris Climate Change Conference reached the hoped-for breakthrough: 195 nations agreed to the climate agreement. This agreement for the first time obliges all nations to protect the climate and will become effective in 2020. The Climate Protection Agreement sets the target to keep global warming due to greenhouse gases below 2°C, if possible, at 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial level. Scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) study climate change and develop innovative technologies to push the transformation of the energy system.
“The Paris Climate Change Conference sent a ground-breaking signal and will initiate a technology change,” the President of KIT, Professor Holger Hanselka, says. “This success certainly was also based on the clear scientific facts relating to worldwide climate change and all foreseeable consequences. Our task is now to fill this agreement with life and to develop safe and sustainable structures for energy supply. Only if we will replace fossil fuels by renewable ones, can the worldwide climate objectives be reached. This is a clear mandate to science. Science now has to develop technologies for sustainable energy supply in cooperation with industry and in accordance with the needs of society. At the same time, it will be necessary to further study climate change and its impacts as well as adaptation strategies.”
Digital press kit of KIT relating to the UN Climate Change Convention in Paris: http://www.pkm.kit.edu/un-klimakonferenz2015.php (in German only).
Being “The Research University in the Helmholtz Association”, KIT creates and imparts knowledge for the society and the environment. It is the objective to make significant contributions to the global challenges in the fields of energy, mobility, and information. For this, about 10,000 employees cooperate in a broad range of disciplines in natural sciences, engineering sciences, economics, and the humanities and social sciences. KIT prepares its 22,800 students for responsible tasks in society, industry, and science by offering research-based study programs. Innovation efforts at KIT build a bridge between important scientific findings and their application for the benefit of society, economic prosperity, and the preservation of our natural basis of life. KIT is one of the German universities of excellence.