Bellona’s pavilion at the COP21 is in partnership with CICERO and has already played host to a number of side-events, ranging in topic from fossil fuel subsidies to production of sustainable biomass in the oceans. Here are a couple of highlights for next week.

President of Iceland and Microsoft to talk data pollution

Across sectors, digitalization brings positive environmental effects. But there is also a climate risk. The concept of outsourcing IT services and data storage in ‘the Cloud’ has become an established phenomenon. But the Cloud is not a cloud. The Cloud is in fact a number of massive datacenters, packed with servers that must be operated and cooled. These datacenters are power-intensive installations and if run on fossil fuel, generate substantial emissions.

President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson of Iceland will open this session, to be followed by a keynote by Microsoft’s Chief Environmental Strategist, Rob Bernard. The panel will also feature Statkraft, Bulk Infrastructure and Innovation Norway, sponsor of the event.

“The world is being digitalized at a furious pace. Overall, the datacentre industry is expected to be responsible for over 2% of global emissions in 2020 – more than the global aviation industry in emissions,” says Bellona Senior Advisor Runa Haug Khoury, moderator of this side-event.

At this side-event we will place focus on society’s increasing digitalization, and the need to power the growing datacenter industry on renewable energy to curb emissions.

The Climate Joker of our Digital Society: the Datacenter Industry

Date: Tuesday 8th.December

Time: 14:30 – 17:30

Location: The Bellona and CICERO Pavilion (Hall 3, room 13)

Register your interest for this event here.

Coffee, croissants and carbon capture

Every morning from Monday 7 December through Thursday 10 December, the Bellona-CICERO pavilion will host a series of talks on carbon capture and storage (CCS), each one to be kicked off at 09:30 with coffee and croissants.

The series of four events will cover topics ranging from the CO2 storage industry potential of the North Sea, via CCS in industry, to the combination of CCS with sustainable biomass for so-called BECCS or Bio-CCS to attain negative emissions.

Speakers include Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, who will shed light on the IPCC’s assessment of the large-scale need for carbon negative solutions like Bio-CCS in a two degree world.

For information on each event and its speakers, follow the link below.

The role of CCS in our low carbon future

Time: 09:30 – 11:00, Monday-Thursday

Place: The Bellona and CICERO Pavilion (Hall 3, room 13)

Register your interest for one or all of these events here.