Birte Holst Jørgensen
Since September 2005, Birte Holst Jørgensen is the Director of Nordic Energy Research, a Nordic research and innovation funding institution, which has been operating for 20 years under the Nordic Council of Ministers. She holds a M.Sc. in Business Economics from Copenhagen Business School and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen.
Holst Jørgensen is an acknowledged expert and reviewer at the EU Commission and several Nordic research funding institutions. She is the vice-chair of the Mirror Group of the European Technology Platform for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells and a board member of the research program RENERGI, established under the Research Council of Norway.
Susan Leschine
Professor in microbiology at the University of Massachusetts.
Martin Parry
Chair of Working Group II of the Intergovermental Panel on Climate
Coleen Vogel
Coleen Vogel, Professor of Sustainability at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Birte Holst Jørgensen
Managing Director of Nordic Energy Research
Birte Holst Jørgensen states that the primary cause of climate change is energy use.
Energy consumption is an integral part of our economic activities. So with improved world economic development we also experience increased energy consumption. These developments have a major impact on the climate. There are several ways to deal with this, but the solutions have to balance economic growth and sustainability.
Bio-energy technologies are very promising contributions to this. But we have to distinguish between biofuels made of food crops and biofuels made of non-food crops and waste. Some argue that food is a scarce commodity and should not be used for fuels whereas others argue that this is about access to food. There is no ideal energy mix, we should not put all eggs in one basket. Building a new energy system is a long-term process that requires strategic decisions.