Renewable Energy

Rasmus VincentzHabitats

Youth Forum - VilniusApril 2012

Habitats www.habitats.dk

Habitats • Habitats provides learning, campaigns and

consultancy services that promotes biodiversity sustainable development for private companies, NGOs and public institutions.

• We design and plan landscapes and green urban

spaces in order to increase their biological, experiential and functional value.

• The vision is to create synergy between human development and evolution of life.

Renewable energy for who?

Renewable energy for industry

Renewable energy for transport

Renewable energy for housholds

Renewable energy for human beings

Global greenhouse gas emissions

Greenhouse gas emissions

Source: IPCC 2007

We are eating OIL

Challenges when oil = food

Economic: when oil price rises

Security: less and harder to get

Practically: tackling of climate changes

‘Human energy’ today

EmissionsToxic chemicals

Water consumptionMonocultural destruction of habitats

(biodiversity loss)Intensive use of fossil fuels

+Unhealthy and unsustainable

The way forward?

• Grow with less fossils• Manage ressources • Protect and establish eco-systems • Change of cultures and habits• Prepare for hard desicions • Re-localisation • Establish food Co-ops • Seasonel based local food

Leading by lust

Rene Redzepi – Restaurant NOMA

Re-enter the flow of ressources

Cycles:

CarbonNutrient

WaterEnergy Genetic

WWF Living Planet report 2010

Can you imaging nature thrive where we live?

The Economics of Ecosystems & Biodiversity (TEEB)

• G8+5 in 2007 “initiate the process of analysing the globaleconomic benefit of biological diversity, thecosts of the loss of biodiversity and thefailure to take protective measures versusthe costs of effective conservation.

= TEEB reports http://www.teebweb.org/

Published 2010

DefinitionBiodiversity“the variability among living organisms from all sources…and the ecological complexes of which they arepart; this includes diversity within species, between speciesand of ecosystems” (Convention on Biological Diversity)

Ecosystem services (ES)SupportingProvisioning RegulatingCultural

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005

• Understanding, research and tool for decision making at all levels

TEEB

“The invisibility of biodiversity values has often encouraged inefficient use or even destruction of natural capital that is the foundation of our economies”

(TEEB Synthesis p.3)

Examples of Ecosystem Services

Status of biodiversity and ecosystem services

• Over the past few hundred years, it is estimated that humans have increased the extinction rate of species by as much as a 1000-fold over the natural rate. Between 12% and 52% of species within well-studied groups such as birds or mammals are threatened with extinction (IUCN Redlist)

• “Overall, efforts to stembiodiversity loss have clearlybeen inadequate, with a growingmismatch between increasingpressures and slowing responses.”(Butchardt et al: Science 2010)