“We must take targeted steps to foster innovation”

Interview: Klaus Lüber

Dr Schniering, climate change poses one of the biggest challenges to our future. Are we all sufficiently aware of what lies ahead?

Schniering: One would have thought so, yet many people continue to underestimate just how fundamentally human civilisation is at risk in certain regions. This is partly to do with what are known as tipping points – when ­specific processes in our Earth’s system reach a point of no return and set dynamics in motion that many ­people still aren’t fully aware of. The Greenland ice sheet could be one such tipping point: if it were to melt completely, global sea levels would rise by seven metres – an ­almost unimaginable process.

Sometimes one has the impression that people actively close their eyes to such consequences.

Schniering: It’s certainly true that people’s attention goes in waves. Now and again a mega event of some kind or another – such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 or the European debt crisis – forces the topic to take a back seat. We are also seeing something of a decline in interest in climate action just now. At the same time, extreme wea­ther events keep putting the issue back onto the agenda. I’m afraid this pattern is unlikely to change in the near future.

It is commonly thought that we can only halt climate change by radically changing our ­behaviour and adapting our growth-oriented economic ­system. What do you think of this view?

Schniering: I believe it vastly overestimates the impacts of individual behaviour. After all, even in the future humankind will continue to rely on infrastructures that are highly emission-intensive by today’s technological standards. These include for example the use of cement and concrete, huge amounts of which will be required in less developed regions of the world in particular. Changes in individual behaviour, even if implemented consistently, will only reduce global carbon emissions by around 20 percent. That’s the finding of a recent study conducted by the energy consultancy DNV.

“Simply calling for a general halt to ­economic growth is a luxury that only the Western states, the ­already industrialised world, can afford.”

So essentially it doesn’t matter at all what we do at the individual level?

Schniering: No, it does matter. But simply calling for a general halt to economic growth is a luxury that only the Western states, the already ­industrialised world, can afford. There are billions of people who want access to energy, to electricity, and who aspire to greater economic prosperity and a better quality of life. It won’t be possible to solve the problem by changing our behaviour alone. We need innovation and technologies combined with behavioural changes, guardrails and a circular economy, not to mention many other measures.

So if innovation is the key, what would you respond to people who say we don’t have enough time to wait for that and should work with what we already have?

Schniering: Well, some technologies are of course already market-ready, such as for the efficient storage of heat, or industrial heat pumps to decarbonise en­ergy-intensive applications in the low-temperature range. They now need to be rolled out – that’s the second important step. It’s im­portant in this context to endeavour to increase acceptance among the population and to simplify bureaucracy at public agencies. However, there are also other areas where technological solutions are urgently needed but are not yet market-ready. Or that currently have no chance of being rolled out because they are still far too expensive. Or because we don’t yet have the processes necessary to enable the new technology to be integrated into existing practice in the first place. A good example is the construction sector – cement alone is responsible for eight percent of global emissions. Then we have aviation and shipping, where no widely useable alternative to fossil fuels yet exists. We also need to restructure our entire energy and electricity systems – this involves nothing less than a revolution in terms of market design.

It is precisely these neglected sectors that your think tank Future Cleantech Architects intends to target. What steps are you taking?

Schniering: We engage in research ourselves to find out exactly where the challenges lie when it comes to developing a specific technology. We also support research-based start-ups in the post-spin-off phase. That’s a tricky time for many of them because the technology has to prove itself in practice and the sectors we are interested in have very long development cycles. On the ­basis of these two steps we then approach policymakers in our capacity as an independent and ­non-profit advisory institute, supporting them for example in developing funding programmes or guidelines for such highly complex areas as the hydrogen ­economy.

Which technological innovations are you focusing on here?

Schniering: Those with substantial potential for bringing about change. This used to be things like catalysts, but today it’s photovoltaics. Current examples include solutions for the construction sector that involve producing alternative cement mixtures that are not limestone-based or developing ­methods of using materials much more efficiently and thereby saving resources. It doesn’t even have to be a technical tool, as a funding framework can also develop huge momentum for change. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the solar industry would not have been so successful worldwide were it not for the intensive funding provided by Germany’s Renewable Energy Sources Act. No matter how much criticism there has been of its implementation in Germany, it is an unparalleled success story in terms of the technology’s international breakthrough.

How important is international cooperation in the battle against climate change?

Schniering: Absolutely crucial. Innovation and global co­operation are equally ­indispensable if we wish to safeguard our future. We must take targeted steps to foster innovation. No country on its own can overcome any of the challenges that we are facing as a result of human-caused climate change. And there are still big differences between countries in cultural, economic and legal terms, as we can see if we compare Germany and the US, for example. We should take advantage of the opportunity to learn from one another, offset each other’s weaknesses and combine our strengths.

After obtaining your PhD, you went to Paris on a Carlo Schmid Programme scholarship and worked for the International ­Energy ­Agency there. How did this benefit you?

Schniering: It was simply a wonderful period in my life. I continue to be impressed by the IEA’s international approach to work. I had already experienced this at the UN, for which I was able to act in an advisory capacity during my doctoral thesis, and I still believe that international cooperation is one of the key factors necessary to make progress on climate action. In this sense I am still benefiting from the scholar­ship programme to this day. —

Dr Peter Schniering is the founder of Future Cleantech Architects (FCA), a non-profit think tank for climate innovations based in Remscheid, Germany. He graduated from the University of Bonn’s interdisciplinary North American Studies Program and in 2007 did his PhD on “Climate Policy and Technology”. Afterwards he worked for the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris on a scholarship provided by the DAAD’s Carlo Schmid Programme. This was followed by stints at strategy consultancy Roland Berger and at the United Nations, where he developed new energy portfolios. He also worked as a consultant to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn.

Learn more about the research pursued by Dr Peter Schniering in our video portrait.