WCEREA organises a series of policy sessions taking place within individual Associations’ events that discuss the same issue, each of them with a regional focus.
2025 – Policy session on critical minerals and the just clean energy transition
The transition to clean and sustainable energy is one of the most pressing challenges of our time, but it is intrinsically linked to the availability of critical minerals, essential for technologies such as batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines. This session will explore the intersection between access to these minerals and social justice, examining how the management of natural resources can impact vulnerable communities, developing countries, and global dynamics. Discussion will address the economic, political, and environmental implications of the growing demand for critical minerals, analyzing the opportunities and challenges of an energy transition that is both ecological and equitable. Panelists will discuss strategies to mitigate the risks of global inequalities, promote sustainable policies, and ensure that the benefits of the transition are distributed fairly and inclusively.
EAERE Annual Conference 2025
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2024 – Policy sessions on climate change, land-use, and biodiversity: economic perspectives
Gone are the days in which climate change and carbon policies sat as distinct from those on biodiversity, once the remit only of conservationists, zoologists, and botanists. Policymakers and researchers alike, building on the recent COP and Biodiversity conferences, have turned their attention towards policy mechanisms that seek to support both the climate and nature. From healthcare to urban planning, offsets to indigenous rights, and climate change to nutrition, land use and biodiversity are increasingly recognised for their centrality to the most pressing environmental and social issues. However, despite this recognition, activities and policies such as critical raw material extraction, carbon offsets, agricultural expansion, and urbanisation are putting ecosystems and communities at risk. Integrated policy approaches, therefore, come with the responsibility to tackle head-on the complexity that underpins truly equitable and sustainable policies, in the face of tipping points in land use, global temperatures, and species extinction. The proposed session will examine how to combine the urgent need to fight climate change with the longevity and equity of biodiversity and land use policy.
AAERE Congress 2024
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AERE Summer Conference 2024
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EAERE Annual Conference 2024
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2023 – Policy sessions on energy policy in the face of global instability
Economies around the world are facing an array of shocks and uncertainties. These include rapid inflation and a mix of policies attempting to address inflation pressures; energy and food price increases with significant cost of living impacts; the potential for recession or at least highly uncertain economic growth; and continuing uncertainties around the war in Ukraine. Global climate and energy policies continue to support energy transition, particularly with the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S. But the effects of high energy prices, rising costs of minerals necessary for electrification, and elements of global economic instability on continuing energy transition are unclear. This panel will explore the impacts of global uncertainties on energy markets, energy transition, and climate and energy policy.
AERE Summer Conference 2023
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EAERE Annual Conference 2023
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AAERE Congress 2023
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