Trumping Climate Change!

Ralph Sims

7.30 pm Wednesday, 11 June, Speirs Centre, Featherston Street, Palmerston North

Held jointly with Engineering New Zealand

New Zealand’s emissions per capita are around the 12th highest in the world. Reducing them has proved challenging, and meeting our internationally agreed targets is looking unlikely. So, is there any hope for future generations? There has to be. A lot has happened since the 2016 Royal Society Te Apārangi report ‘Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy for NZ’. The potential for a low-carbon future remains, but achieving it won’t be easy.

Professor Emeritus Ralph Sims began his energy research at Massey University in the early 1970s, making and testing biodiesel. In 2001, while on the Board of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA), he helped establish New Zealand’s first energy efficiency and renewable energy strategy. From 2006 to 2010 he was seconded to the International Energy Agency in Paris. He chaired the panel of experts for the Royal Society Te Apārangi 2016 publication ‘Transition to a low-carbon economy for New Zealand’. He has been a lead author for five Mitigation Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2013, Professor Sims was appointed part-time to the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel of the World Bank’s Global Environment Facility, Washington DC, for a 6-year term. He became a Companion of the NZ Order of Merit in the King’s Birthday Honours list in 2023, for services to sustainable energy and climate mitigation.

The Earle Lecture is held every two years to celebrate the work of Professors Dick and Mary Earle, and their contribution to the profession of engineering in New Zealand and abroad.