Hey there, my name is Zac, I am an Environmental Studies major, specializing in climate change technological applications (e.g. zero/negative emission technology), Water & Waste Systems, Environmental policymaking and Resilience Systems Framework. I have a Diploma in Environmental & Water Technology aka Environmental Engineering, which is why the technical side of environmental studies interests me.
In the conference, I am hoping to be able to observe events such as the Global Climate Action, National Statements of the countries in South-East Asia, and all the side events and exhibitions that have to do with my area of interests. My area of interests in this COP-24 is the business of energy market in the Asia-Pacific region. Given that most of the countries in the Asia-Pacific region still runs primarily on fossil-fuel, I am interested to study how is it going to change and how are the countries going to achieve their Paris Agreement targets. At the same time, that does not mean that I will just be focusing on the Asia-Pacific region only and ignore the rest of the world, given that the world runs as a complex adaptive system of panarchy. I will also keep a lookout for events regarding China’s One belt One Road initiative to learn more about it since it affects a lot of countries in the world. Since I am also in Katowice, I will also be observing how Poland is going to progress in their energy systems, they are currently the 2nd highest coal user in the EU.
My methods are to visit all the main events that have relations to energy and countries statements, the side-events and exhibitions, interviewing Ong Tze Haung from the Singapore’s PM Office. I will also hope to visit Katowice’s coal-fired power plant to see if there is any technological advancement in improving efficiency or having a cleaner output by air filtration or wet scrubbing of the exhaust chimney, or anything they are doing to improve the air quality.
At the side events and exhibitions, I will be going to keep a lookout for Energy, National Determined Contributions, Paris Agreement, and Sustainable development, especially if they have something to do about the Asia region as well. For example, “People Power Now! Transforming our Energy System”, “Making climate action more transparent and ambitious: lessons learned from the NDCs”, “The role of agriculture, energy and systemic change to meet the Paris Agreement”.
At the interview with Ong Tze Haung, since he is working in the Singapore National Climate Change Secretariat, I will be asking questions about Singapore’s transition to renewable energy.
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