Securitising the Green Deal?

Securitising the Green Deal?

The challenges of aligning EU climate and security policy

2 May 2022, 5:00-6:30pm CET
Online & on-site, Hertie School

An event in the CIVICA Public Lecture Series Tours d'Europe

The Russian invasion of Ukraine marks a geopolitical turning point for the European Union, with implications on the energy market. The Hertie School will host a conversation between researchers and experts on the European Green Deal and the impact of the new geopolitical challenges on climate action.

Speakers will talk about the implications of the security developments on the “Fit for 55” package – a set of proposals to cut emissions and achieve climate neutrality by 2050 –, which EU institutions and member states are due to finalise over the next months. This raises the question if and how the altered context will change the EU’s approach to tackling climate change.

The peaking energy prices and the rising defence expenditures affect the affordability and social cohesion of the Green Deal’s emission reduction targets. Complementarities between climate and security policies exist, for example in speeding up the deployment of renewables, but there are also trade-offs in the use of coal power plants to substitute natural gas in the short term.

Join us to discuss and learn more on the future of EU climate and security policy with researchers, practitioners and experts from CIVICA universities and beyond!

The language of the event is English.

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Speakers

Welcome remarks

  • Mark Hallerberg, Dean of Faculty and Research and Professor of Public Management and Political Economy, Hertie School

Roundtable

  • Christian Flachsland, Professor of Sustainability and Director of the Centre for Sustainability, Hertie School
  • Mauro Petriccione, Director-General of DG CLIMA, European Commission
  • Geneviève Pons, Director General and Vice President, Europe Jacques Delors
  • Jesse Scott, Director of International Programmes, Agora Energiewende
  • John Szabó, PhD researcher, Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, Central European University

Chair

Speaker biographies

  • Mark Hallerberg
  • Christian Flachsland
  • Mauro Petriccione
  • Geneviève Pons
  • Jesse Scott
  • John Szabó
  • Sabrina Schulz

Mark Hallerberg is Dean of Faculty and Research and Professor of Public Management and Political Economy at the Hertie School. From September 2020 to March 2022 he was first Deputy President, then Acting President of the Hertie School. In his years at the Hertie School, he also served as Director of the MPP and of the MIA programmes among others. His research focuses on fiscal governance, tax competition, financial crises, and European Union politics.

He previously held academic positions at Emory University, where he maintains an affiliation with the political science department, as well as at the University of Pittsburgh and Georgia Institute of Technology. He has advised, among others, Ernst and Young Poland, the European Central Bank, the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ), the Inter-American Development Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. He received his PhD from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1995. 

Christian Flachsland is Professor of Sustainability at the Hertie School and Director of the School's Centre for Sustainability. He is also a Research Fellow at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC), where he previously worked as a group leader. His research focuses on the design, governance and political economy of climate, energy and sustainability policy. He co-coordinates the research on governance in the Kopernikus-Ariadne project, a major research consortium assessing climate policy options for Germany and Europe, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). He was a contributing author to the Fifth Assessment Report on the Mitigation of Climate Change by the IPCC.

Mauro Petriccione has been serving as Director-General of the European Commission's DG CLIMA since 2018. Mauro joined the Commission in September 1987, working in trade policy, covering a wide range of activities and negotiations from trade defence to standards, investment, competition, WTO, dispute settlement, relations with Member States and European institutions. As Deputy Director-General of DG TRADE from 2014 to early 2018, he was responsible, among others, for trade and sustainable development. Mauro also served as Chief Negotiator for the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, CETA; the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement; the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement.

Mauro graduated in Law from the University of Bari in 1982 and after a brief spell doing research at the same University, he moved to London in 1984, first as a Visiting Research Scholar at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and then as postgraduate student at The London School of Economics and Political Science. He obtained an LL.M. from the University of London in 1986.

Geneviève Pons is Director General and Vice President of Europe Jacques Delors. She was in charge of environmental and climate matters in Jacques Delors’ Cabinet during his last mandates as President of the European Commission (1991-1995). She is an Honorary Director of the European Commission, where she held several management positions before becoming Director of the ILO’s Legal Service in 2013, and Director of the WWF’s European Office in 2015. Geneviève is also Vice President of Transparency International Europe and a Knight of the Legion of Honour. 

Genevieve is considered by Politico as one of the most influential women in Brussels, notably in the field of environment. She is a member of the EU Mission: Restore our Ocean and Waters, chaired by Pascal Lamy. She is co-chair with Pascal Lamy of the Antarctica2020 coalition, which aims to protect vast marine areas around Antarctica. She is also co-chair with Sébastien Treyer (IDDRI) of Ifremer Stakeholders Committee.

Jesse Scott is Director of International Programmes at the think-tank Agora Energiewende in Berlin. She leads Agora's work on the energy transition in major and emerging economies, including research projects on clean energy systems, collaboration with a global network of think tanks, and political strategy. Jesse’s experience spans business, government, campaigning, law, and think tanks. She also teaches at the Hertie School in Berlin on the theory and practice of influencing public policy, with a focus on climate policies and the EU Green Deal.

Before joining Agora in February 2019, she worked at the International Energy Agency in Paris, where she was a lead author of the agency’s pathbreaking report on the opportunities and risks of digitalising the energy system. Prior to that, she worked for fifteen years in Brussels on the EU's energy and climate policy-making, including as Head of Climate and Environment for the association of the electricity sector Eurelectric, where she organised cross-sector advocacy to strengthen the EU Emissions Trading System, and at the association of the natural gas sector Eurogas. She is an advisor to the World Economic Forum, the Climate Bonds Initiative, and the Florence School of Regulation. Jesse holds a bachelor's and a master's from Cambridge University, and also studied in Italy at the European University Institute.

John Szabó is a PhD researcher at Central European University and a Junior Fellow at the Centre for Economic and Regional Studies. His PhD focuses on the intersection of EU climate and natural gas policy, alongside which he has also explored how gas consumption in Europe has shifted from town gas (past) to natural gas (current) and has been moving towards hydrogen (future). Broadly speaking, he is interested in the role of energy in society and he tends to deploy critical theory to interpret its political economic and cultural dimensions as well.

Sabrina Schulz was, until recently, the Executive Director of Sustainable Development Solutions Network Germany, promoting and encouraging Germany’s commitment to sustainable development in the EU and internationally. She is an expert on climate, energy and biodiversity issues, climate diplomacy, and sustainable finance. Previously, Sabrina has served as Head of the Berlin office at KfW, Germany’s national promotional and international development bank; as the Director of the Berlin office at E3G, an international non-profit climate and energy think tank; as a Policy Advisor on climate and energy to the British High Commission in Canada and led a project on climate security; in various policy capacities for think tanks and consultancies in Germany, the UK, the US and Canada.

Sabrina holds an MA in Public Policy and Management from the University of Potsdam, for which she also studied at the University of Konstanz and the Université catholique de Louvain, as well as an MA in International Politics and a PhD from the University of Wales at Aberystwyth in the United Kingdom. She is also the Chairwoman of the Board of econnext, a holding investing in sustainable and impact-oriented start-ups; Deputy Chair of the Executive Committee of the Board of Agora Energiewende; and she volunteers as a Policy Fellow at Das Progressive Zentrum, a Berlin-based policy think tank.

 

In the CIVICA Public Lecture Series Tours d'Europe, researchers from CIVICA universities present their recent findings and interrogations on timely topics to the general public. The series aims to strengthen citizens' knowledge base and to facilitate a direct dialogue between social science researchers and the wider society. 


Notice: Video & audio will be recorded during the entire event and made available, partly or in full, on the channels of CIVICA, its member institutions, and partners. By joining the event, you automatically consent to the recording. If you do not consent to being recorded, please discuss your concerns with the event's host.  

This event is part of the CIVICA Public Lecture Series Tours d’Europe. CIVICA brings together eight leading European higher education institutions in the social sciences to mobilise and share knowledge as a public good and to facilitate civic responsibility in Europe and beyond. CIVICA was selected by the European Commission as one of the pilot European Universities under Erasmus+. 

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