On Wednesday 24th November Swansea University’s Faculty of Science and Engineering will host its fifth Zienkiewicz Lecture.

The guest speaker will be Baroness Brown of Cambridge DBE FREng FRS, Julia King who will deliver a lecture entitled ‘Delivering Net Zero, the challenges ahead’.

Speaker: Baroness Brown of Cambridge DBE FREng FRS, Julia King

Date: 4pm, 24th November

Free tickets: Register to attend

Further information:

On 27th June 2019 the UK Government took the historic step of making a legal commitment to delivery 100% greenhouse gas emissions reduction by 2050 – Net Zero.

This was the fastest implementation of a recommendation by the Climate Change Committee since it was created under the Climate Change Act in 2008. But changing the legislation is the easy part. Introducing the policies, regulations, support mechanisms and changes in behaviour that will be needed to deliver the net zero target will be much harder.

In December 2020 the Climate Change Committee published its advice to Government on the 6th Carbon Budget and a path to Net Zero in 2050 compatible with the UK’s commitments under the Paris Agreement. The lecture will cover the rationale for both the level of and the timescale for the target, the calculation of costs and the challenges to delivery in the next 30 years. These include: replacing gas in heating; doubling the size of our electricity system; building a hydrogen industry the size of our current electricity system; changing how we drive; transforming farming; ensuring a ‘just transition’.

The challenge facing us is delivering this scale of change at pace, with the world watching, as we prepare to host COP 26 in Glasgow in November.

Zienkiewicz Lecture – Swansea University