Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN) organized on 27 November an event on Energy Transition: technical, economic and social aspects towards a sustainable development. It was attended by academics, legislators and representatives from government, guilds and civil society. The Brown to Green Report 2018 and a policy paper: “Aspectos socio-ambientales de la transición energética en la Argentina” produced as part of the efforts of Climate Transparency, an international partnership of FARN and 13 other research organizations, were used as input for the discussions.
During the opening, Enrique Maurtua Konstantinidis, Climate Change senior adviser (FARN), explained that the event would be carried out under the premise of a holistic approach of the energy transition.
The first panel discussed the technical aspects of the transition, and was facilitated by Ramiro Fernández (Fundación Avina). Representatives of civil society (Carlos Tanides from Fundación Vida Silvestre), government (deputy Juan Carlos Villalonga from Los Verdes, Argentina’s green party), academia (Gabriel Blanco from UNICEN) and private sector (Nicola Melchiotti from ENEL and Marcelo Álvarez from CADER) presented some of their key findings from various energy scenarios.
The second panel focused on the economics of the transition and was moderated by Mariana Micozzi (FARN). María Marta Di Paola (FARN) talked about fossil fuel subsidies, Vernónica Gutman (Fundación Torcuato Di Tella – FLACSO Argentina) discussed carbon pricing and Constanza Gorleri (Galicia Bank) mentioned green bonds and the role of banks and investors.
Later on, Kathy Hipple from IEEFA participated in a discussion on stranded assets and the financial risks related to fracking.
Finally, the last panel discussed the social aspects of the transition, in regards to the role of guilds, social conflictivity, labour projections and from a gender perspective. It was composed by Jorge Villareal (Iniciativa Climática de México), Lucrecia Wagner (UNICEN – CONICET), Roque Pedace (CADER), Pablo Somoza (UOCRA) and María Elina Estébanez (CONICET), and moderated by Laura Rocha (Periodistas por el Planeta).
