Agnieszka Tomaszewska

Act on climate change

As you know, the aim of the projects supported from the FCO Strategic Programme Fund Low Carbon High Growth is to promote low carbon economy that at the same time contributes to high economic growth. Three such projects are currently implemented in Poland and I have already described them in my blog. This time I would like to encourage you to visit a website called “Climate Success”. There you will find examples of companies, local authorities and other organisations from different countries that have succeeded in implementing solutions reducing their negative impact on climate. They include insulating the existing buildings or building new ones using environment friendly technologies, switching to low carbon production or increasing the share of renewable energy sources in generating electricity and heat. As you can see from the examples presented at the “Climate Success” site, pro-climate actions can also be quite profitable, which can be seen when you pay your bills for electricity, gas, water or waste collection. Unfortunately, I have not found a single example from Poland on the site. Have you heard of anything that would be worth showing to others? If so, it would, perhaps, be a good idea to describe such cases and submit them to the site administrator.

While focusing in my work  on project coordination, I do not have much time to surf the web looking for information. And yet, there are two websites that I would like to recommend to you in view of the coming Climate Summit in Copenhagen.
The first one, “Act on Copenhagen”, is an official site of the UK government, containing information about the activities of various groups which strive for an ambitious global climate agreement in Copenhagen. Views of business people appear here side by side with scientific experts opinions and interviews with government officials. Recently, an interactive map of the world has been launched, illustrating probable economic and social consequences of an increase of air temperature by 4 degrees Celsius as a result of climate change. The map has been developed by distinguished scientists from the UK Met Office Hadley Centre. Its copies have just been sent to foreign ministers of a number of countries, vital for the success of the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen. I know that the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Radosław Sikorski received the map on 22 October.

The “Act on CO2” website contains valuable guidance on what every one of us can do in our own households or workplaces in order to reduce CO2 emissions. The carbon footprint calculator available on the page will let you calculate the amount of carbon emissions resulting from all your activities and prepare an individual carbon footprint reduction plan. Most of us will not go to the Copenhagen summit but we can all do something good for the climate by changing our ways.

Posted at 15:29 27 October 2009 by Agnieszka Tomaszewska  |  Comments[0]

Ed Miliband in Poland

On 7 October I had a chance to meet Ed Miliband (on the photograph). The UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change came to Poland to hold meetings with representatives of the Polish government before the COP15 climate negotiations in Copenhagen. He talked to the Minister of Finance, Mr. Jacek Rostowski and to senior officials of the Office of the Committee for European Integration, Ministry of Economy and other departments. He also gave an interview to the Rzeczpospolita daily.

In the afternoon, we arrived at the Warsaw School of Economics, where Ed Miliband gave a speech on why it is necessary to sign an ambitious global agreement to address climate change. In the Minister’s opinion, both moral arguments and responsibility for the planet we are going to leave to future generations as well as economic reasons call for such a solution. The cost of tackling climate change  is currently estimated at the level of 1% GDP, but if we decide to act only in ten or twenty years, the cost will be much higher. Ed Miliband also said that in order to reduce the costs of CO2 emissions, China, India and other big economies of the world should actively join the fight against climate change. The Minister indicated, however, that according to the UK, rich countries should support developing countries financially and help fund the projects leading to carbon reduction, as it would be impossible for those countries to finance such expensive projects on their own. At the end of his speech, Mr. Milliband quoted Jacek Kuroń, who said “Who if not you?”, the question that reminds us all that we are the ones who are responsible for what is happening around us and for the legacy we are going to leave to future generations. I think that these words could be a good motto for the Copenhagen summit.

I must say that I really enjoyed the question-and-answer part of the lecture, with questions asked by the audience: students, non-governmental organisations and representatives of business. While answering those questions, Ed Miliband had to talk about things as diverse as the role of business in fighting climate change and support that could be given by individual governments, through nuclear energy, to Al Gore’s documentary, to what UK would perceive as a success of the Copenhagen Summit, with only 60 days to the conference date.

Posted at 14:49 12 October 2009 by Agnieszka Tomaszewska  |  Comments[1]

Polish energy experts on a study visit to the UK

I am just browsing through photographs from a study visit to the UK of Ms. Ewa Kałuzińska and Mr. Bronisław Nowak, local government experts from Lubin and Cieszyn. The visit was a special prize funded by the British Embassy in the Most Energy Efficient Community in Poland competition, organised by the Polish National Energy Conservation Agency.
The visit in Woking , Leicester   and Southampton  took place in mid September and was one of our very special projects. Polish experts had an opportunity to see some practical aspects of fighting climate change and to visit the projects recently completed in those cities. The sites included railway stations, sports centres with roofs covered with solar panels and photovoltaic cells as well as small CHP units generating heat and electricity for the local area. The participants also visited cultural centres and houses of highest energy efficiency standards.
I know that it has been a very good study visit so I would like to thank all our partners involved in organising it. The photos I’ve received will be used to illustrate the interview that I’m going to carry out with the participants. We will publish the interview on our Embassy website and will make it available to all organisations interested in the UK experience with tackling climate change.

Posted at 14:14 09 October 2009 by Agnieszka Tomaszewska  |  Comments[0]