Climate Leaders to Meet at the Budapest Climate Summit on Dec 7

By 2030, the world must cut greenhouse gas emissions almost by half to avoid the worst consequences of climate change and to preserve the chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, set out by the Paris Agreement.

The pandemic, followed by the war in Ukraine and the spiraling energy crisis further complicated the situation, but we cannot forget that climate change is a long-term challenge that affects all sectors of the economy and all levels of society.

As a niche event focusing on the green transition of the CEE region’s economy, the Budapest Climate Summit is ideally placed to take a prominent role in connecting policymakers and the business ecosystem and academia by providing a platform to discuss the driving trends of the region’s green transition and to identify the opportunities and challenges ahead of us. The Summit will be organized under the honorary patronage of László Palkovics, Minister of Technology and Industry of Hungary.

Thanks to the European Green Deal, Europe is on the path to becoming the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. In REPowerEU, the EU laid down its plan to accelerate the roll-out of renewable energy, increase energy savings, and the diversification of energy supplies in order to provide affordable and secure energy for Europe and sustainability for the planet. Clara de la Torre, Acting Director General of the European Commission's DG CLIMA will share the Commission’s view on how we can achieve these goals.

The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – which provides regular assessments on the scientific basis of climate change – showed that the extent and magnitude of climate change impacts are larger than previously estimated. It also shows how human-induced climate change is causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people. Diana Ürge-Vorsatz, Vice Chair of the Working Group III. of IPCC will speak about the findings of the report at the Budapest Climate Summit.

Only three weeks after COP27, taking place from 6 to 18 November 2022 in Sharm El-Sheikh, the Budapest Climate Summit will also provide an excellent opportunity to review the main takeaways of the year’s most important climate moment. Barbara Botos, Hungary’s Ambassador-at-Large for Climate, who follows COP27 in person, will share her insights about the conference and the most important outcomes.

In light of the EU consensus, member states must come forward with concrete actions to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. Hungary aims to significantly reduce its energy import dependency with local, renewable energy. By the middle of the century, the government would like to see gas consumption drop to 3-4 billion cubic meters from the current 11.5 billion cubic meters. Attila Steiner, Hungary’s State Secretary for Energy will speak at the Budapest Climate Summit about the investments required to deliver on these ambitions.

One of the main focuses of the Budapest Climate Summit is to present how business leaders, coming from a range of sectors including energy, transport, retail, communication, finance or infrastructure transform their operations to become competitive, sustainable, inclusive economies that will deliver net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The Budapest Climate Summit will feature top managers of leading companies such as TESCO, MET Group, ExxonMobil, Dentons, E.ON, Vodafone, PannoniaBio, and many others who will present their business strategy to address sustainable transformation on the road towards a low-carbon economy. The full list of confirmed speakers can be found here.