Speaker: Professor Dr Rolf Wüstenhagen, Good Energies Professor for
Management of Renewable Energies and a Director of the
Institute for Economy and the Environment at the University of St.
Gallen (Switzerland).
Date: Wednesday, 24 August 2011
Time: 5:30pm to 7:00pm
Venue: 11 Slim Barracks Rise (off North Buona Vista Road)
NTU@one-north campus
Level 3 Auditorium 302
Singapore 138664
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Abstract
After the March 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima, a number of European countries revised their nuclear policies. The German government revised a previous decision to extend the lifetime of existing nuclear power plants, and then agreed with an overwhelming majority of the federal parliament on a 10-year phase-out plan by 2022. Similarly, the Swiss government has shelved plans for up to three new nuclear power plants and took a decision to phase out nuclear at the end of the lifetime of the existing reactors (between 2020 and 2035). In Italy, the government’s plans to build four new reactors were rejected in a referendum by 94% of the population. In all three countries, public acceptance of nuclear power had sharply dropped in the wake of the Japanese nuclear crisis. However, it was the combination of this short-term reaction with longer-term trends in the energy industry that facilitated substantial shifts in recent European energy policies, notably the countervailing cost trends in nuclear versus renewable energy technologies and an increasing awareness of the competitive opportunities in growing cleantech industries. This presentation will provide an account of Post-Fukushima policy changes in key European countries and explore the current and future opportunities to replace nuclear power by a combination of renewable energy and energies efficiency in Europe.
About the speaker
Rolf Wüstenhagen is the Good Energies Professor for Management of Renewable Energies and a Director of the Institute for Economy and the Environment at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland). He has held visiting faculty positions at the University of British Columbia (2005) and Copenhagen Business School (2008), and was a member of the Swiss Federal Energy Research Commission (2004-2010). From 2008 to 2011, he served as one of the lead authors for the special report on renewable energy sources and climate change mitigation, published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in May 2011. Rolf’s research focuses on decision-making under uncertainty by energy investors, consumers and entrepreneurs and has been published in a variety of academic journals and other outlets. He embarked on an academic career after retiring from one of the leading European energy venture capital funds. From August 1 to September 8, 2011, Rolf is a visiting scholar at the National University of Singapore, jointly hosted by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (supported by the MacArthur Foundation) and the Energy Studies Institute (ESI). He can be contacted at: rolf.wuestenhagen@unisg.ch
This seminar will be held under Chatham House rules: “when a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant may be revealed.”
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