Company representatives and researchers meet for inaugural D°GREES symposium in Hamburg

4. Juli 2022

Foto: Clara Privato

During the last three days of June, the first D°GREES symposium successfully took place in Hamburg. As an integral part of our cooperation with our project partners, the symposium aims at bringing together all parties involved in the D°GREES project and enhancing exchange among them. Originally, the event was planned for 2021 but had to be postponed due to restrictions related to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the D°GREES project team was delighted to be able to invite representatives of all participating companies as well as several academic cooperation partners this year for a three-day, in-person event to Hamburg. With the presence of company representatives from the US, Brazil, Japan, and Germany, the participant list reflected the international reach of the project and promised interesting debates. As the representatives from Hong Kong could not participate in person due to travel restrictions, some of the presentations and workshops were organized in hybrid formats.

After a welcoming dinner at the event venue on the evening before, the symposium was kicked off on Wednesday, June 29, with a welcome speech by Prof. Dr. Timo Busch and Dr. Matthew Johnson, followed by a brief introduction round of all participants. Prof. Dr. Jochem Marotzke set the scene with his keynote on "Global CO₂ emissions reductions and the Paris Agreement: Insights from IPCC AR6" reminding all present of the urgent need to bring emissions down to net zero. Over the course of the day, the D°GREES project team presented research results, and the participants discussed the challenges and opportunities of corporate decarbonization in three interactive sessions. Thomas Frisch and Theresa Rötzel summarized the academic literature on corporate climate reporting and target setting before highlighting some preliminary observations from the first interview rounds with the companies. In doing so, several challenges to reporting and target setting were pointed out that were subsequently discussed with all participants. The second interactive session followed a similar procedure.  Dr. Matthew Johnson and Theresa Rötzel offered an account of their systematic literature review on the challenges of corporate deep decarbonization and contextualized this with insights from the interviews. The participants split into three break-out groups that focused on different levels of barriers respectively. The separation into smaller groups enabled very lively and rewarding discussions among company representatives and with the D°GREES researchers that functioned as moderators. Subsequently, the main insights from these break-out-discussions were summarized and shared with the plenum, so everyone could benefit from all discussions. In the final interactive session of the day, Dr. Matthew Johnson and Solange Commelin laid out several facilitators and supporting factors for deep decarbonization that emerged from both the academic literature and the company interviews, followed by an open discussion with all participants.

On Thursday, June 30, the symposium participants reassembled in the morning to head towards Altenwerder for a guided tour around the world’s first climate-neutral container terminal. The tour provided unique insights into how large quantities of containers are handled and how this can be done in a sustainable manner. In the afternoon, the symposium participants were welcomed by representatives of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce, who generously offered its facilities to host the second keynote speech by Prof. Dr. Stefan C. Aykut on "Corporate Climate Action: Insights from COP26 in Glasgow". After the closing remarks and a feedback round on the symposium from the D°GREES team, the event came to a close with networking and informal discussions during dinner on the Chamber of Commerce's rooftop terrace.

Feedback from the participating company representatives conforms to the perception of the D°GREES research team that the symposium was very successful and yielded valuable insights for both researchers and company representatives. It was great to see the willingness of all parties to further engage in fruitful cooperation in order to better understand and support the decarbonization of the economy. The D°GREES team would like to thank all participants of the 2022 inaugural D°GREES symposium. We are looking forward to future cooperation with our project partners!