Road to Copenhagen was a unique initiative which aimed to insert democratic perspective, as well as social and sustainable development dimensions, into the Climate Change debate. This unique forum gathered progressive and constructive ideas and developed specific policy inputs and feed them directly to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and the lead negotiators, at strategic points during the formal negotiating process up to and including COP 15.
The Boston-Power leadership team grew up on Agenda 21, which heavily influenced their concern with Climate Change. The team believes that learning to respect nature and enjoying its beauty compels people to take the effort necessary to protect it. As the founder for a growing energy storage company with a vision of contributing to combating Climate Change, Dr. Christina Lampe-Onnerud was invited to advise the Club of Madrid in 2007 to speak on the extended use of energy storage to help combat Climate Change.
In 2007, Boston-Power joined the Road to Copenhagen (organized by Club of Madrid, Globe and Respect), and has since worked tirelessly to promote and invite businesses, specifically in the energy storage field, to join. Energy storage is an enabler to solving today’s pressing threats to Climate Change.
On December 8, 2009, as a member of the Technology Working Group, Dr. Lampe-Onnerud delivered the following message to the participants:
I am delighted to be here on the invitation of Margot Wallstrom, Club of Madrid, and the Respect organization, all of whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with for last couple of years.
I am concerned of what we hear coming in to this meeting. I am a chemist by training, and I am very worried to hear suggestions of quick fixes. There are proposals floating around such as "spraying the outer space with sulfur particles so that we can deflect the sun;" a really bad idea – only to be compared to “dumping iron oxide into our oceans.” I would really like to have us think of our earth and our time here as our opportunity to do something for the long haul. We’re not going to go after quick fixes. Frankly, anyone who proposes "to make experiments in the test tube in which you live” – is out to lunch!
I’m here to help provide a framework and a reference on technology available today. I also think there is a tendency sometimes to say we will solve the really big problems later – the really big problem I would advocate is here today and needs to be solved today, and can be solved today. We have never in the history of human kind had this much momentum from the political scene where political leaders all over the world are willingly engaging in the discussions of environmental policy and sustainability. I encourage all of you who have the political power to be brave. Take a 30 to 50 year perspective, put together a framework and help get this translated into local governments where ultimately all decisions are made.
The business community – and I can speak as one of the business leaders of emerging technology providers – are ready to deploy. There has never been this much capital available to deploy new technology. I’m a founder of a company only five years old. We have had the opportunity to go to market with HP, the world's #1 PC notebook vendor; we’re engaging with the electric transportation segment; and we’re going into clean tech for energy storage to do load leveling and deployment of solar and wind power for storage applications. Never before has it been possible for an innovator to team up with large companies and have access to massive capital.
I would also like to speak as a mother of two children and as a citizen of the earth that it is extremely important that we continue to leverage the interest and the pressure – the public pressure – and basically the willingness to look for guidance for change. There is an opportunity to do new things and to change some habits. No, it can’t be super radical – we can’t change everything overnight. But there are so many technologies here today, simple things like help us recycle, we the citizens of the earth. Help us make sustainable purchase decisions. Rather than penalizing green technologies – let’s penalize the ones that are not.
I was here ten years ago with the European Parliament and Commission discussing whether you could do electrification of cars, and back then we said yes you can do it. Today we’re starting to deploy it. The technology is available and the willpower is here.
So I would love to see the outcome of this meeting deliver very concrete discussions, and just as a starting point – solar power today is available and deployed immensely in Europe, and there are lots of followers both in Asia and in the United States. Energy storage can be delivered in a very affordable way in mass production and people are really looking to all of us for leadership.
Read a thank you letter from The Road to Copenhagen organizers.
