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For Wales Climate Week 2023, please click here!
Rural Wales – an excellent climate for green growth
A major event including a keynote address by the Welsh Government Minister for Climate Change will focus on Wales’s rural challenge in the climate change debate, where we look to shed more light and galvanise even greater commitment to the rural challenge. This event will be a rare opportunity to meet and hear from senior member-officers from our Association, aswell as pioneering representatives from different organisations such as The Rhug Estate, Confor Wales and Wales YFC.
Climate Workshop day – Secondary Schools
On 18 November we invite you to join us throughout the day for a series of 40 minute virtual workshops around Climate Change. You can bring your whole class along to find out about nature based solutions, creating a circular economy, using our voices for positive change and more. You are welcome to partake in one or two sessions or the whole day and to sign up different classes or year groups, whichever suits you best.
Climate Workshop week – Primary Schools
We are running a week of live stream sessions from 22-26 November where we invite your whole class to join us every morning for 40 minutes of fun, learning and action. We will provide resources to support learning activities throughout the week and encourage learners to really understand the challenge of Climate Change, what is being done to take action and how they can play an important part and feel empowered to make a difference. Sessions will run in Welsh and in English.
Stopping Curlew Extinction: A Plan for Recovery in Wales
Join Curlew Wales/ Gylfinir Cymru for the launch of A Wales Action Plan for the Recovery of Curlew, the UK’s most pressing bird conservation priority. Modelling indicates that Curlew could be extinct in Wales as a breeding bird by 2033. However, there is hope even within the context of the climate emergency and nature crisis we all face. A strong partnership including NRW, conservation organisations and land managers has come together to write this plan. The plan not only delivers on curlew recovery and 87 other associated species but it also moves us towards the climate resilient landscape management that provides for business, people and nature.
Key speakers include: Julie James MS (Minister for Climate Change), Mark Isherwood MS (Species Champion for Curlew), Clare Pilman (CEO of NRW) and many more. The event starts at 13.45.
Smart buildings | Enabling net zero ambitions
Smart buildings provide new ways to meet users’ developing digital expectations, enabling personal control of the environment, acoustics, lighting, space booking or audio/visual features. They are also a critical component in the race to achieve net zero carbon in operation – providing new ways to understand and manage occupancy, maximise efficiency and avoid wasted energy on heating, lighting and air-conditioning.
In this interactive breakfast event, our smart buildings specialists Alan Jones and Karen Warner will be joined by Matthew Jones, Sustainability Manager for the Welsh Parliament; Keith Sims from Cardiff University's Estates and Campus Facilities department and Huw Llewellyn, Head of Property and FM at Admiral Group, to explore the role of smart buildings in achieving net zero carbon ambitions, and the key considerations when planning, designing, constructing, operating, and retrofitting smart buildings.
Institute of Welsh Affairs (IWA)
Renewing the Focus: Re-energising Wales Two Years on – Q&A
In 2019, the IWA’s three year Re-energising Wales project, set out a practical plan for Wales to move to 100% renewable energy by 2035. At the time this was felt to be an overly ambitious goal, but our target has since been adopted by both Welsh and UK Governments.
Our new report, Renewing the Focus: Re-energising Wales Two Years On, assesses progress against our 2019 recommendations. It offers a timely reminder of the way forward for Wales, and an ambitious call to join the global movement for decarbonisation in a way that will develop our nation’s economy as well as secure humanity’s future. In this piece of work co-authored by Hywel Lloyd and Andy Regan, we argue that the Welsh Government should focus its energy policy on driving economic success for Wales’ key renewable sectors: marine, bioenergy and housing.
In this event, you will have the opportunity to hear from Hywel Lloyd about the research and motives that informed the report. Following this, we will deliver the Institute of Welsh Affairs’ response to Welsh Government’s Net Zero Plan. Finally, we will host a Q&A led by Will Henson, the IWA’s Policy and External Affairs Manager.
Heating Homes: disrupting homes & neighbourhoods on the route to net zero?
This afternoon event offers both an exhibition and interactive discussion on the changes and disruptions, households and communities might face on the road to zero carbon heating.
Net zero is often talked about as a technical challenge but the new technologies that are needed to make heating climate safe could mean changes to the fabric of our homes, communities and how we pay for energy. This exhibition brings together information about these changes with quotes and images from social science research examining citizens views on heating and energy systems change. What does heating mean in your life? How should net zero heating be paid for? How much disruption to homes and communities is it fair to expect? What positive disruptions could net zero bring? Come and view the exhibition and speak with Dr Gareth Thomas and energy social scientists from Cardiff University about what net zero might mean for you, not only as consumers but as families and citizens. We have some ideas, but we want to hear from you too!
This event forms part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science at Cardiff University.
Wales Real Food and Farming Conference
As national governments discuss our future at COP26, it's a vital time for all of us to step up and do our bit. We are delighted to be hosting the third Wales Real Food and Farming Conference on 24-26 November and we hope that everyone who wants to create a new vision for food and farming in Wales will want to join us.
As well as our guest speakers (Prof Tim Lang, Prof Lois Mansfield and Adam Jones, or Adam yn yr Ardd) there will be a full programme of presentations and discussions covering farming, nutrition, public health and policy. Highlights include treating food as medicine, responding to controversial topics such as intensive poultry units, why GMOs aren't green, and growing and marketing more fruit and nuts in Wales.
We will also investigate the potential of the new Community Food Strategy for Wales, consider cooperative models for food chains and ask how to bring more young people into farming. Alongside this will be informal networking sessions and a public debate on land use. Last year 's conference proved how interactive an online event can be and produced a series of recordings which we made available for free, reaching many more people.
This year we have generous sponsorship from Food and Drink Wales, and our programme shows how good practice all along the food supply chain can help create a fair and healthy society. Tickets are £5-35 plus booking fee.
BioWILL: Development of an Integrated ‘Net Zero’ Bio-refinery
BioWILL is a Interreg NWE funding project focusing on an integrated “zero waste biorefinery utilising all fractions of willow feedstock for the production of high to medium based bio-chemicals/materials, renewable energy in the form of bio-methane and natural fertilisers.
BioWILL consists of 10 project partners in four countries (Belgium, France, Ireland and UK).
Environment Platform Wales are supporting Welsh Government to host this informative webinar giving an insight into the achievements of the project.
The webinar will comprise of a series of presentations followed by audience generated questions and answers. The talks will cover:
• An introduction to the BioWILL project
• Willow breeding
• Medical applications – salicin from willow bark
• Packaging applications – moulded pulp products from willow
• Energy production using anaerobic digestion
• Life Cycle Assessment of the BioWILL process
The Climate Emergency and Social Inequality – Responses from Researchers in Wales
Energy systems, economics and community engagement will be among the topics discussed at our first Early Career Research Conference on Friday 26 November.
We will be showcasing the work of more than 20 ECRs during the event, which follows the COP 26 climate summit and links with Wales Climate Week from 22-26 November.
To view the full programme, click here
Our contributors are based at universities across Wales, and their work spans disciplines across STEMM, humanities, arts and social sciences.
Six themed sessions will take place:
We will then close with a more detailed roundtable discussion on the following topic:
Will technologies designed to decarbonise homes exacerbate or reduce social inequalities?We encourage you to attend the whole conference if possible, but participants are also welcome to dip in and out of the sessions.
