After all, this morning has been quite straightforward. The line in front of Bella Center was just 30 min (compared to a few hours the last couple of days, as stated before), so that we had the opportunity to join in a few side sessions. The discussion on nuclear power and sustainability was not too interesting, and looking through the leaflet listing the other side events we spotted Corinne Mauch, the mayor of Zurich, and decided to join the session on sustainable cities and local sustainability. After strolling around for nearly 20 min searching for the right place we finally got there. The location was pretty unfortunate, a kind of in-build pavilion in the main EU Pavilion near Hall 6, all voices from the main hall could be overheard, loud, small, only a few people. Corinne Mauch was the second speaker to hold her speech. Apart from talking about the implementation of the 2000W society in Zurich, she conveyed the message that for herself as a person and her party, she attributes utmost importance to what her citizens think about her politics. She reiterated the importance of referenda (direct democracy public votings) for her work and her happiness about the support of Zurich’s inhabitants in terms of sustainability. Although the concept of the 2000W society was anything but new to me, I got to know some important fact.
The 2000W society’s objectives are threefold:
- 2000W emitted by each citizen continuously, day and night
- 1.0 tons of CO2 emissions per citizen and year
- 75 percent of renewable energy involved in energy generation
Some interesting questions came up concerning how these values were calculated. Where to set the boundaries? It’s quite hard to calculate exact values if the CO2 involved in shipping apples from New Zealand are included, for example. I got to now that only the Endwerte were included, the final values. Whatever that means…
Folks, I’m off again, this time for lunch with Franziska who dashed off to another side session while I decided to give this blog a go. Well, kind of. Hope to speak to you soon… from tomorrow on, we won’t get in here because there will be a limitation for NGO badge holders to 1000, so that’ll be the time to update this page. Hopefully! So… stay tuned!
