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31st of May: Climate modelling and degrowth

Most approaches in mainstream climate-related energy modelling focus on techno-fixes, thereby shaping the neocolonial discourse on the solutions to the climate crisis. They clash with the idea of a “just transition” and represent an often overlooked obstacle to real system change. This capitalistic, patriarchal and white-supremacist way of thinking heavily impacts energy modelling (e.g. integrated assessment models and Germany-specific energy scenarios), which in turn highly influences what the general public perceives as “politically feasible” and, more broadly, the current narrative on the mitigation approaches to the climate crisis.

With our speakers, Kai Kuhnhenn and Luisa Cordroch, we will discuss the problems of the prevailing approaches and delve deeper into why climate change mitigation scenarios need to urgently consider energy sufficiency / degrowth in the Global North, taking the heat transition and the gas phase-out debate in Germany as an example.

Kai Kuhnhenn worked 8 years at the Umweltbundesamt on climate scenarios and is now active at Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie. Luisa Cordroch is doing her PhD at the Europa Universität Flensburg, where she’s working on sufficiency energy scenarios and the heat transition (Wärmewende).

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