The Japan Society

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ARCHIVED The Path to Net Carbon Zero in the UK and Japan, with Naoko Ishii and Adair Turner

Wednesday 20 January 2021 / 11:00am
The Path to Net Carbon Zero in the UK and Japan, with Naoko Ishii and Adair Turner

Date
Wednesday 20 January 2021
Time
11.00 am – 12.00pm (GMT)

8.00pm – 9.00pm (JST)
Check the time in your location

Booking Details
Free – Donations Welcome
Registration essential

Book online here

The activities of the Japan Society are made possible thanks to the support of its members. This event is free of charge and open to all. We realise that this is a difficult time for many people. However, if you are planning to attend and do not have a membership subscription as an individual or through your employer, please consider making a donation. You can find details of membership and how to join the Japan Society community here.


For the first Japan Society webinar of 2021, chairman Bill Emmott will be joined to discuss strategies to achieve net carbon zero by two energy and climate change experts, Professor Naoko Ishii, director of the Center for Global Commons, University of Tokyo, and Lord Adair Turner, chair of the Energy Transitions Commission.

The Energy Transitions Commission’s September 2020 report Making Mission Possible – Delivering a Net-Zero Economy, argues that a net-zero global economy is technically and economically possible by mid-century, but will require a profound transformation of the global energy system. In the FT on 11 December Lord Turner underlined, however, that the cost of achieving this is plummeting.

Both the UK and Japan have committed themselves to this target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, but what is the pathway for each to achieve this goal? Our two speakers will assess the challenges and priorities for policy makers, look forward to COP26 in November 2021, and consider how the net-zero agenda has been affected by the Coronavirus pandemic and subsequent recession.

Dr Naoko Ishii joined University of Tokyo on 1 August 2020 as professor, executive vice president, and inaugurating Director for the Center for Global Commons, a new institute at the university dedicated to the study and promotion of sustainable development and the systems changes needed to facilitate it. Prior to this, she was CEO and chair of the Global Environment Facility, a funding body supervised by the World Bank, from 2012 until August 2020.

Before joining the GEF, she was Japan’s Deputy Vice Minister of Finance and represented the Japanese Government during the design of the Green Climate Fund. She has worked as a Country Director for the World Bank and held positions at the IMF and Harvard Institute for International Development. She has authored two books, The Economics of Policy Coordination (政策協調の経済学, Nikkei 1990) and An Empirical Analysis of Long-term Economic Development (長期経済発展の実証分析, Nikkei 2003).

Adair Turner, Lord Turner, has been Chair of the Energy Transitions Commission since January 2016 and is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, which he chaired until 2019. He is also on the Advisory Board of Shanghai group Envision Energy, and a board member of Envision AESC.

From September 2008 until 2013, Lord Turner chaired the UK’s Financial Services Authority, and played a leading role in the post crisis redesign of global banking and shadow banking regulation as Chairman of the International Financial Stability Board’s major policy committee. He has also served as Director General of the Confederation of British Industry (1995-2000); chairman of the UK Low Pay Commission (2002-2006); chairman of the Pensions Commision (2003-2006); and was the first chairman of the Climate Change Committee (2008-2012) an independent body advising the UK Government on tackling climate change. He is author of Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit, and Fixing Global Finance (2015, Princeton University Press).

Explore our series of webinars with leading experts in politics, economy and media. More details on upcoming events and past webinar videos HERE