Today, we are reporting on black sheep from New Zealand, where the third attempt to put a price on agricultural climate emissions has failed. The new center-right government has also cut the budget for climate action. To make matters worse, oil and gas exploration is to be facilitated. Marc Daalder analyzes what the new policy means for climate action in New Zealand.
Imprisoned journalists, human rights violations, the influence of the oil lobby – COP29 host Azerbaijan is being criticized. The country also lacks experience in climate policy, says Nugzar Kokhreidze from the Climate Action Network (CAN) in an interview with Lisa Kuner and Samira El Hattab.
We also report on a study today that suggests that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has probably underestimated global warming due to the rise in CO2 concentrations. There has also been an incorrect estimate of how many jobs the European solar industry needs. Furthermore, find out what the USA and China are planning in terms of carbon pricing. And there is also good news – about the expansion of wind energy in Germany.
Since the unveiling of 3.7 billion NZD in cuts to climate policy in its first Budget, the new New Zealand Government has subsequently announced plans to abandon two of its predecessor’s key emissions reduction initiatives:
The government says declining gas supply is putting New Zealand’s energy security at risk and is a result of the 2018 ban on issuing new offshore exploration permits. This announcement has been seized on by the UK Conservative Party, to attack the UK Labour Party’s policy for a similar ban on new offshore exploration ahead of the July 4 election.
However, the New Zealand Government’s talking points don’t quite stack up. It has historically taken at least a decade from finding new offshore gas to production beginning in New Zealand, meaning new supply from 2018 wouldn’t be on the market until 2028 at the earliest. Moreover, there are existing discoveries which can still legally be drilled. A New Zealand energy company applied for a permit to do so just last year. And a report drawn up in 2023 to inform the previous government’s plan to transition away from gas found that existing onshore fields alone are enough to supply New Zealand’s electricity sector on the path to net zero emissions by 2050.
The reason for declining supply is not the 2018 ban, but the reality that offshore exploration and production in New Zealand is a poor investment. It’s a country with binding net zero targets and carbon budgets and where the Opposition has pledged to reinstate the offshore ban if it is repealed. In other words, long-term demand is unlikely to be there and sovereign risk is a further disincentive.
The most likely outcome of the repeal of the ban is that no new oil and gas is produced, given these factors. But it may still do harm to New Zealand’s relationship with the Pacific Islands, which it has traditionally worked closely with in climate negotiations. Vanuatu’s Climate Change Minister Ralph Regenvanu last year urged the new government not to repeal the ban, while Palau President Sonny Whipps Jr. called the move “tragic” and “backwards.”
The same week as the repeal of the ban was announced, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay and Climate Minister Simon Watts announced they would amend New Zealand’s Zero Carbon Act to remove a 2025 deadline for the entry of agriculture into New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (NZETS).
The NZETS covers all sectors except agriculture. Significant negotiations between the sector and the previous government secured an agreement in 2019 to price emissions from livestock by 2025 at the latest. Over time, both the government and the sector came to agree that the NZETS is not the best tool for doing so, as it conflicts with New Zealand’s split-gas approach where methane targets are split out from long-lived gas (CO2 and N2O) targets because of their differing warming impacts. Instead, a partnership between the sector and government developed a bespoke, farm-level pricing plan which would have placed a levy of just 0.09 NZD per kilo of lamb and half a cent per litre of milk by 2030 – though this would rise over time.
While environmentalists critiqued this plan for its lack of ambition, the sector consensus behind it also began to collapse. This came for two reasons: The leadership of agricultural lobby groups were not in touch with the grassroots who were still majority opposed to any price on emissions and changing political winds suggested they could get a better deal under a centre-right government after the 2023 election. Sure enough, the new government has promised to rework the bespoke pricing scheme and implement it by 2030. At the same time, however, the government has moved to repeal the NZETS backstop.
This marks the third time that plans to price agricultural emissions have failed in New Zealand, after the industry successfully defeated a carbon tax plan in 2004 and had a 2013 deadline for entry into the NZETS scrapped by a previous centre-right government.
Additionally, Agriculture Minister McClay said on June 27 that the government will weaken New Zealand’s methane targets, in defiance of advice from the independent Climate Change Commission. The existing methane targets were set in alignment with pathways from the IPCC’s 2018 report on 1.5C:
The government has commissioned a separate review of what the targets would be if they merely sought to achieve “no additional warming” from agriculture after 2017. In other words, this would “lock in” the warming caused by New Zealand’s agriculture sector to-date, neither contributing to further heating of the planet nor contributing to cooling.
The Climate Change Commission has said this approach would lead to higher emissions and figures from the IPCC suggest the ambition of the methane targets might be more than halved if the “no additional warming” approach is adopted. Nonetheless, McClay said recently that the government would adopt the review panel’s targets, even if it conflicted with the advice of the Climate Commission.
Mr. Kokhreidze, is Azerbaijan a good choice to host the COP29?
No, I don’t think it’s a good choice to host the COP in Azerbaijan or this region. It’s another country with a lot of oil and gas. In recent years, COPs have always been held in countries that are responsible for a lot of emissions. I believe this is the influence of the oil and gas lobby and that is a problem.
Do you share the concern that COP29 will be a greenwashing event?
That is currently the big question. We don’t want it to become a greenwashing event. As civil society, we are committed to this and also see some opportunities for this to succeed.
What exactly are these opportunities?
It may be that Azerbaijan mainly wants to use the COP to boost its image. But this will only work if the COP negotiations are successful and ambitious climate targets are agreed. We at CAN are currently organizing with other stakeholders to convince the COP presidency that this is the best approach.
What challenges do you face?
On the one hand, Azerbaijan is a country with many problems and a democratic deficit. There are repeated reports of human rights violations. Many representatives of civil society had to leave the country. We also see the turbulent situation between Armenia and Azerbaijan, where nobody knows what will happen next and whether the war could flare up again. On the other hand, the country is now facing these huge, important climate negotiations. We are unsure how much leaders actually know about climate diplomacy and how they can steer and facilitate processes.
Do you see Azerbaijan harboring high climate policy ambitions?
I do see ambitions. But from the approach so far, I deduce that there is not enough knowledge and understanding of the processes. That is why Azerbaijan asked the United Arab Emirates and some other governments for assistance. These are the right steps, but one year will not be enough to prepare for such important negotiations. The COP is very complex, even as a participating country. Coordinating everything and achieving global goals as a host is even more complex. The question is how well Azerbaijan will manage this.
This year’s COP will once again discuss the global fossil fuel phase-out. How well can an oil-exporting country coordinate such a phase-out?
Azerbaijan is already confronted with the phase-out anyway, its oil resources are dwindling. Oil drilling is also causing drinking water problems and the water level in the Caspian Sea is dropping. This means that the country will focus on gas in the coming years. However, Azerbaijan will also expand renewables in parallel: Not because it absolutely wants to, but for economic reasons. There are plans for solar projects to become an exporter of green energy to the EU in the future. That is the political vision, but gas is part of it, and that is a problem.
Do you think Azerbaijan is doing enough to promote the fossil fuel phase-out?
No, of course not. The fossil fuel lobby is still very strong, and that won’t change in the coming years.
Azerbaijan declared that this COP will be a COP of freedom. What do you make of this with regard to the human rights situation?
Let’s hope so. It would be great if all political prisoners and representatives of human rights organizations who are currently imprisoned and being mistreated were released. However, I am very skeptical that this will happen. But here’s hoping.
COP29 is also being advertised as the “COP of peace.” Can that succeed?
This narrative comes from the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan won the war, and I think it now wants to show the world what a peaceful country it is. But this is clearly geopolitical propaganda: Thousands of Armenians had to leave Nagorno-Karabakh. They are now refugees who cannot return. Talking about peace in this situation is very problematic.
What is needed to guarantee human rights, particularly press freedom, around the COP?
This is one of the big questions that CAN is working on with representatives from Azerbaijan. We are always told that everything will be fine, everything is safe. In fact, Azerbaijan is also a very welcoming country. But we also see that the government is not particularly open. So I’m not too optimistic: Perhaps the human rights violations around the COP will decrease somewhat, but afterward, everything will be the same again. That’s why we want international support for civil society in the region. Climate justice cannot be achieved without human rights and civil society.
Do you anticipate any problems with protests and journalistic work around the COP?
We have already experienced situations like this in Egypt and Dubai in recent years: The Blue Zone at the COP [the official area of the negotiations, editor’s note] will be the area where protest is allowed. In the rest of the country, there is no freedom of expression, no freedom to demonstrate. It is also difficult to involve the local population if protests outside the COP site are impossible. The situation will not improve much in the run-up to the COP.
Collaboration: Samira El Hattab
Friederike Otto – physicist and attribution researcher, Imperial College London
As a pioneer in the field of attribution research, Friederike Otto has revolutionized climate science. She and her Dutch colleague Geert Jan van Oldenborgh founded the World Weather Attribution initiative in 2015 – and WWA succeeded where research regularly failed: showing if and how individual extreme weather events are actually linked to climate change. For this, the physicist and philosopher has received numerous awards. Otto is the lead author of the sixth IPCC Assessment Report, headed the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University until 2021 and has since conducted research at the Grantham Institute in London. Her motivation: the pursuit of justice.
Felix Creutzig – Professor of Sustainability Economics of Human Settlements and Head of the Land Use, Infrastructure and Transportation working group, TU Berlin
Felix Creutzig’s research examines what the climate-friendly society of the future could look like – in other words, how housing, transportation and energy systems would need to be built to make everyday life climate-friendly. Creutzig studied physics and medicine and researched the economics of climate change before taking over as head of the working group on land use, infrastructure and transportation at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) in Berlin in 2012. He contributed to several IPCC reports, including as coordinating lead author of a chapter in the Sixth Assessment Report. Since 2017, he has held the newly established chair for Sustainability Economics of Human Settlements at TU Berlin.
Antje Boetius – Director, Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI)
The German marine biologist and microbiologist specializes in questions of marine material cycles and biodiversity, as well as research into deep-sea ecosystems. She has been Scientific Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute at the Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven since 2017. She currently focuses on the effects of climate change on the biogeochemistry and biodiversity of the Arctic Ocean. Boetius has been part of more than 50 expeditions on German and foreign research vessels since 1989 and has discovered, among other things, microbial communities that break down methane without the need for oxygen. In 2018, she was awarded the German Environmental Prize.
Ottmar Edenhofer – Director and Chief Economist, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
Climate economist Ottmar Edenhofer is one of the most distinguished voices for consistent global carbon pricing. He teaches as a professor at TU Berlin, runs the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) think tank and heads the PIK with Johan Rockström. He is a member of many science academies and advisory bodies and co-chaired Working Group III of the IPCC from 2008 to 2015. He focuses on the costs of the climate crisis and the opportunities for economically efficient climate action. In his youth, Edenhofer was a member of the Jesuit order and advises Pope Francis on scientific matters, including in the preparation of his encyclical “Laudato Si.” Edenhofer actively participates in political and social debates on climate action, global justice and development policy.
Franziska Tanneberger – Director, Greifswald Mire Center (GMC)
Franziska Tanneberger and her colleagues have managed to positively anchor a bulky and complex topic of high relevance in the public debate in a short space of time: the protection of peatlands and the rewetting of dry peatland areas. This contribution to climate action, biodiversity, sustainable agriculture and water management is part of the agenda of the “Greifswald Moor Centrum” headed by Tanneberger. The landscape ecologist works as a lecturer at the University of Greifswald with her team, supported by the Michael Succow Foundation. They are promoting peatland conservation projects around the world, creating the first world map of peatlands and forming a network of business and science to turn wetlands into sustainable and green areas through “paludiculture.” Tanneberger chaired the Future Council in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in 2020/21 and has been a member of the German government’s Sustainability Council since 2023.
Joeri Rogelj – Director of Research, Imperial College London
The Belgian climate scientist analyzes the links between Earth system science and social and societal change, as well as the effectiveness of international climate action agreements, carbon budgets and net zero targets. As one of the world’s foremost researchers, he was the lead author of Working Group I (scientific basis) in the sixth IPCC Assessment Report. He is also a member of the European Science Advisory Board on Climate Change (ESABCC), the EU Commission’s most important advisory body on climate issues.
Carl-Friedrich Schleussner – Head of Integrated Climate Impacts Research Group, International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA)
Carl-Friedrich Schleussner conducts research into the scientific aspects of the climate crisis as well as its impact on society. Before joining IIASA, he headed the climate science division at consultancy firm Climate Analytics. The company works with 130 experts around the world on concepts for energy transition and decarbonization, and evaluates the climate measures of countries. Schleussner primarily focuses on issues relating to international climate negotiations and the possibility of “overshooting” the 1.5 degree target. His working group currently researches models to move “from attribution to accountability” – in other words, from attributing the causes of climate change to taking responsibility. He also holds a PhD in physics and is an honorary professor of geography and the transformation of the human-environment system at Humboldt University in Berlin.
Matthias Duwe – Head of Climate, Ecologic Institute
Matthias Duwe has been following the international climate negotiations as an observer since 1999 and has more than twenty years of experience in EU climate policy. He works as Head of Climate for the Ecologic Institute, where he coordinates the non-profit institute’s climate policy work. He mainly focuses on international climate negotiations and the European Union’s climate and energy policy – in particular, climate framework laws, national energy and climate plans and international climate diplomacy. Duwe studied social sciences with a focus on environmental policy and environmental planning at the University of Oldenburg.
Andreas Knie – Sociologist, Head of the Digital Mobility and Social Differentiation Research Group, Berlin Social Science Center (WZB)
What social contexts lead to new technology? This is the big question that sociologist Andreas Knie keeps asking himself in his research. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the career of the diesel engine and has long advocated a transition in transportation that puts more flexible public services rather than cars at the heart of politics – with the help of digitalization. Knie teaches sociology at TU Berlin, is a member of Scientists for Future and serves on the council of the think tank Agora Verkehrswende. Since 2020, he has headed the research group “Digital Mobility and Social Differentiation” at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB) with Weert Canzler.
Angelika Humbert – Glaciologist, Head of the Ice Modeling Group and Remote Sensing Group, Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) Bremen
For Angelika Humbert, ice is a unique material that forms the basis of her research. As a glaciologist, she develops – and uses – satellite-based methods to observe the glaciers and ice sheets of the polar regions. She also does this on-site during expeditions to the Antarctic and Arctic. Using the data obtained, she simulates how the ice in Greenland and Antarctica could behave in the future in order to project sea level rise and better assess risks. This is no trivial matter: So far, the ice masses are changing faster than the models show. Humbert studied physics at TU Darmstadt. Her doctoral thesis focused on ice shelves. She founded a glaciology working group in Hamburg and has been at the AWI since 2012. She holds a professorship for ice sheet modeling at the University of Bremen.
Today, we are reporting on black sheep from New Zealand, where the third attempt to put a price on agricultural climate emissions has failed. The new center-right government has also cut the budget for climate action. To make matters worse, oil and gas exploration is to be facilitated. Marc Daalder analyzes what the new policy means for climate action in New Zealand.
Imprisoned journalists, human rights violations, the influence of the oil lobby – COP29 host Azerbaijan is being criticized. The country also lacks experience in climate policy, says Nugzar Kokhreidze from the Climate Action Network (CAN) in an interview with Lisa Kuner and Samira El Hattab.
We also report on a study today that suggests that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has probably underestimated global warming due to the rise in CO2 concentrations. There has also been an incorrect estimate of how many jobs the European solar industry needs. Furthermore, find out what the USA and China are planning in terms of carbon pricing. And there is also good news – about the expansion of wind energy in Germany.
Since the unveiling of 3.7 billion NZD in cuts to climate policy in its first Budget, the new New Zealand Government has subsequently announced plans to abandon two of its predecessor’s key emissions reduction initiatives:
The government says declining gas supply is putting New Zealand’s energy security at risk and is a result of the 2018 ban on issuing new offshore exploration permits. This announcement has been seized on by the UK Conservative Party, to attack the UK Labour Party’s policy for a similar ban on new offshore exploration ahead of the July 4 election.
However, the New Zealand Government’s talking points don’t quite stack up. It has historically taken at least a decade from finding new offshore gas to production beginning in New Zealand, meaning new supply from 2018 wouldn’t be on the market until 2028 at the earliest. Moreover, there are existing discoveries which can still legally be drilled. A New Zealand energy company applied for a permit to do so just last year. And a report drawn up in 2023 to inform the previous government’s plan to transition away from gas found that existing onshore fields alone are enough to supply New Zealand’s electricity sector on the path to net zero emissions by 2050.
The reason for declining supply is not the 2018 ban, but the reality that offshore exploration and production in New Zealand is a poor investment. It’s a country with binding net zero targets and carbon budgets and where the Opposition has pledged to reinstate the offshore ban if it is repealed. In other words, long-term demand is unlikely to be there and sovereign risk is a further disincentive.
The most likely outcome of the repeal of the ban is that no new oil and gas is produced, given these factors. But it may still do harm to New Zealand’s relationship with the Pacific Islands, which it has traditionally worked closely with in climate negotiations. Vanuatu’s Climate Change Minister Ralph Regenvanu last year urged the new government not to repeal the ban, while Palau President Sonny Whipps Jr. called the move “tragic” and “backwards.”
The same week as the repeal of the ban was announced, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay and Climate Minister Simon Watts announced they would amend New Zealand’s Zero Carbon Act to remove a 2025 deadline for the entry of agriculture into New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (NZETS).
The NZETS covers all sectors except agriculture. Significant negotiations between the sector and the previous government secured an agreement in 2019 to price emissions from livestock by 2025 at the latest. Over time, both the government and the sector came to agree that the NZETS is not the best tool for doing so, as it conflicts with New Zealand’s split-gas approach where methane targets are split out from long-lived gas (CO2 and N2O) targets because of their differing warming impacts. Instead, a partnership between the sector and government developed a bespoke, farm-level pricing plan which would have placed a levy of just 0.09 NZD per kilo of lamb and half a cent per litre of milk by 2030 – though this would rise over time.
While environmentalists critiqued this plan for its lack of ambition, the sector consensus behind it also began to collapse. This came for two reasons: The leadership of agricultural lobby groups were not in touch with the grassroots who were still majority opposed to any price on emissions and changing political winds suggested they could get a better deal under a centre-right government after the 2023 election. Sure enough, the new government has promised to rework the bespoke pricing scheme and implement it by 2030. At the same time, however, the government has moved to repeal the NZETS backstop.
This marks the third time that plans to price agricultural emissions have failed in New Zealand, after the industry successfully defeated a carbon tax plan in 2004 and had a 2013 deadline for entry into the NZETS scrapped by a previous centre-right government.
Additionally, Agriculture Minister McClay said on June 27 that the government will weaken New Zealand’s methane targets, in defiance of advice from the independent Climate Change Commission. The existing methane targets were set in alignment with pathways from the IPCC’s 2018 report on 1.5C:
The government has commissioned a separate review of what the targets would be if they merely sought to achieve “no additional warming” from agriculture after 2017. In other words, this would “lock in” the warming caused by New Zealand’s agriculture sector to-date, neither contributing to further heating of the planet nor contributing to cooling.
The Climate Change Commission has said this approach would lead to higher emissions and figures from the IPCC suggest the ambition of the methane targets might be more than halved if the “no additional warming” approach is adopted. Nonetheless, McClay said recently that the government would adopt the review panel’s targets, even if it conflicted with the advice of the Climate Commission.
Mr. Kokhreidze, is Azerbaijan a good choice to host the COP29?
No, I don’t think it’s a good choice to host the COP in Azerbaijan or this region. It’s another country with a lot of oil and gas. In recent years, COPs have always been held in countries that are responsible for a lot of emissions. I believe this is the influence of the oil and gas lobby and that is a problem.
Do you share the concern that COP29 will be a greenwashing event?
That is currently the big question. We don’t want it to become a greenwashing event. As civil society, we are committed to this and also see some opportunities for this to succeed.
What exactly are these opportunities?
It may be that Azerbaijan mainly wants to use the COP to boost its image. But this will only work if the COP negotiations are successful and ambitious climate targets are agreed. We at CAN are currently organizing with other stakeholders to convince the COP presidency that this is the best approach.
What challenges do you face?
On the one hand, Azerbaijan is a country with many problems and a democratic deficit. There are repeated reports of human rights violations. Many representatives of civil society had to leave the country. We also see the turbulent situation between Armenia and Azerbaijan, where nobody knows what will happen next and whether the war could flare up again. On the other hand, the country is now facing these huge, important climate negotiations. We are unsure how much leaders actually know about climate diplomacy and how they can steer and facilitate processes.
Do you see Azerbaijan harboring high climate policy ambitions?
I do see ambitions. But from the approach so far, I deduce that there is not enough knowledge and understanding of the processes. That is why Azerbaijan asked the United Arab Emirates and some other governments for assistance. These are the right steps, but one year will not be enough to prepare for such important negotiations. The COP is very complex, even as a participating country. Coordinating everything and achieving global goals as a host is even more complex. The question is how well Azerbaijan will manage this.
This year’s COP will once again discuss the global fossil fuel phase-out. How well can an oil-exporting country coordinate such a phase-out?
Azerbaijan is already confronted with the phase-out anyway, its oil resources are dwindling. Oil drilling is also causing drinking water problems and the water level in the Caspian Sea is dropping. This means that the country will focus on gas in the coming years. However, Azerbaijan will also expand renewables in parallel: Not because it absolutely wants to, but for economic reasons. There are plans for solar projects to become an exporter of green energy to the EU in the future. That is the political vision, but gas is part of it, and that is a problem.
Do you think Azerbaijan is doing enough to promote the fossil fuel phase-out?
No, of course not. The fossil fuel lobby is still very strong, and that won’t change in the coming years.
Azerbaijan declared that this COP will be a COP of freedom. What do you make of this with regard to the human rights situation?
Let’s hope so. It would be great if all political prisoners and representatives of human rights organizations who are currently imprisoned and being mistreated were released. However, I am very skeptical that this will happen. But here’s hoping.
COP29 is also being advertised as the “COP of peace.” Can that succeed?
This narrative comes from the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan won the war, and I think it now wants to show the world what a peaceful country it is. But this is clearly geopolitical propaganda: Thousands of Armenians had to leave Nagorno-Karabakh. They are now refugees who cannot return. Talking about peace in this situation is very problematic.
What is needed to guarantee human rights, particularly press freedom, around the COP?
This is one of the big questions that CAN is working on with representatives from Azerbaijan. We are always told that everything will be fine, everything is safe. In fact, Azerbaijan is also a very welcoming country. But we also see that the government is not particularly open. So I’m not too optimistic: Perhaps the human rights violations around the COP will decrease somewhat, but afterward, everything will be the same again. That’s why we want international support for civil society in the region. Climate justice cannot be achieved without human rights and civil society.
Do you anticipate any problems with protests and journalistic work around the COP?
We have already experienced situations like this in Egypt and Dubai in recent years: The Blue Zone at the COP [the official area of the negotiations, editor’s note] will be the area where protest is allowed. In the rest of the country, there is no freedom of expression, no freedom to demonstrate. It is also difficult to involve the local population if protests outside the COP site are impossible. The situation will not improve much in the run-up to the COP.
Collaboration: Samira El Hattab
Friederike Otto – physicist and attribution researcher, Imperial College London
As a pioneer in the field of attribution research, Friederike Otto has revolutionized climate science. She and her Dutch colleague Geert Jan van Oldenborgh founded the World Weather Attribution initiative in 2015 – and WWA succeeded where research regularly failed: showing if and how individual extreme weather events are actually linked to climate change. For this, the physicist and philosopher has received numerous awards. Otto is the lead author of the sixth IPCC Assessment Report, headed the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University until 2021 and has since conducted research at the Grantham Institute in London. Her motivation: the pursuit of justice.
Felix Creutzig – Professor of Sustainability Economics of Human Settlements and Head of the Land Use, Infrastructure and Transportation working group, TU Berlin
Felix Creutzig’s research examines what the climate-friendly society of the future could look like – in other words, how housing, transportation and energy systems would need to be built to make everyday life climate-friendly. Creutzig studied physics and medicine and researched the economics of climate change before taking over as head of the working group on land use, infrastructure and transportation at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) in Berlin in 2012. He contributed to several IPCC reports, including as coordinating lead author of a chapter in the Sixth Assessment Report. Since 2017, he has held the newly established chair for Sustainability Economics of Human Settlements at TU Berlin.
Antje Boetius – Director, Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI)
The German marine biologist and microbiologist specializes in questions of marine material cycles and biodiversity, as well as research into deep-sea ecosystems. She has been Scientific Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute at the Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven since 2017. She currently focuses on the effects of climate change on the biogeochemistry and biodiversity of the Arctic Ocean. Boetius has been part of more than 50 expeditions on German and foreign research vessels since 1989 and has discovered, among other things, microbial communities that break down methane without the need for oxygen. In 2018, she was awarded the German Environmental Prize.
Ottmar Edenhofer – Director and Chief Economist, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
Climate economist Ottmar Edenhofer is one of the most distinguished voices for consistent global carbon pricing. He teaches as a professor at TU Berlin, runs the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) think tank and heads the PIK with Johan Rockström. He is a member of many science academies and advisory bodies and co-chaired Working Group III of the IPCC from 2008 to 2015. He focuses on the costs of the climate crisis and the opportunities for economically efficient climate action. In his youth, Edenhofer was a member of the Jesuit order and advises Pope Francis on scientific matters, including in the preparation of his encyclical “Laudato Si.” Edenhofer actively participates in political and social debates on climate action, global justice and development policy.
Franziska Tanneberger – Director, Greifswald Mire Center (GMC)
Franziska Tanneberger and her colleagues have managed to positively anchor a bulky and complex topic of high relevance in the public debate in a short space of time: the protection of peatlands and the rewetting of dry peatland areas. This contribution to climate action, biodiversity, sustainable agriculture and water management is part of the agenda of the “Greifswald Moor Centrum” headed by Tanneberger. The landscape ecologist works as a lecturer at the University of Greifswald with her team, supported by the Michael Succow Foundation. They are promoting peatland conservation projects around the world, creating the first world map of peatlands and forming a network of business and science to turn wetlands into sustainable and green areas through “paludiculture.” Tanneberger chaired the Future Council in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in 2020/21 and has been a member of the German government’s Sustainability Council since 2023.
Joeri Rogelj – Director of Research, Imperial College London
The Belgian climate scientist analyzes the links between Earth system science and social and societal change, as well as the effectiveness of international climate action agreements, carbon budgets and net zero targets. As one of the world’s foremost researchers, he was the lead author of Working Group I (scientific basis) in the sixth IPCC Assessment Report. He is also a member of the European Science Advisory Board on Climate Change (ESABCC), the EU Commission’s most important advisory body on climate issues.
Carl-Friedrich Schleussner – Head of Integrated Climate Impacts Research Group, International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA)
Carl-Friedrich Schleussner conducts research into the scientific aspects of the climate crisis as well as its impact on society. Before joining IIASA, he headed the climate science division at consultancy firm Climate Analytics. The company works with 130 experts around the world on concepts for energy transition and decarbonization, and evaluates the climate measures of countries. Schleussner primarily focuses on issues relating to international climate negotiations and the possibility of “overshooting” the 1.5 degree target. His working group currently researches models to move “from attribution to accountability” – in other words, from attributing the causes of climate change to taking responsibility. He also holds a PhD in physics and is an honorary professor of geography and the transformation of the human-environment system at Humboldt University in Berlin.
Matthias Duwe – Head of Climate, Ecologic Institute
Matthias Duwe has been following the international climate negotiations as an observer since 1999 and has more than twenty years of experience in EU climate policy. He works as Head of Climate for the Ecologic Institute, where he coordinates the non-profit institute’s climate policy work. He mainly focuses on international climate negotiations and the European Union’s climate and energy policy – in particular, climate framework laws, national energy and climate plans and international climate diplomacy. Duwe studied social sciences with a focus on environmental policy and environmental planning at the University of Oldenburg.
Andreas Knie – Sociologist, Head of the Digital Mobility and Social Differentiation Research Group, Berlin Social Science Center (WZB)
What social contexts lead to new technology? This is the big question that sociologist Andreas Knie keeps asking himself in his research. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the career of the diesel engine and has long advocated a transition in transportation that puts more flexible public services rather than cars at the heart of politics – with the help of digitalization. Knie teaches sociology at TU Berlin, is a member of Scientists for Future and serves on the council of the think tank Agora Verkehrswende. Since 2020, he has headed the research group “Digital Mobility and Social Differentiation” at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB) with Weert Canzler.
Angelika Humbert – Glaciologist, Head of the Ice Modeling Group and Remote Sensing Group, Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) Bremen
For Angelika Humbert, ice is a unique material that forms the basis of her research. As a glaciologist, she develops – and uses – satellite-based methods to observe the glaciers and ice sheets of the polar regions. She also does this on-site during expeditions to the Antarctic and Arctic. Using the data obtained, she simulates how the ice in Greenland and Antarctica could behave in the future in order to project sea level rise and better assess risks. This is no trivial matter: So far, the ice masses are changing faster than the models show. Humbert studied physics at TU Darmstadt. Her doctoral thesis focused on ice shelves. She founded a glaciology working group in Hamburg and has been at the AWI since 2012. She holds a professorship for ice sheet modeling at the University of Bremen.
