Jean Monnet CoE, Kobe University held a mini-symposium to students of Hyogo Senior Hight School on 22 December, 2020 to discuss SDGs. Unfortunately, the mini-symposium had to be held online, because the COVID-19 disease became serious again in Hyogo Prefecture. In the mini-symposium two lectures were given. The first was "Save the Earth: affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy," by Professor Kita Takashi of SDGs Promotion Office and of Graduate School of Engineering. The second was "Environment and SDGs Policies of the EU," by Professor Yoshii Masahiko of Jean Monnet CoE, Kobe University.
Professor Kita at first introduced Kobe University's commitments to SDGs from the viewpoints of creation of new technologies, industries, and society; education; human resources; collaboration with local societies and governments; and international cooperation. And he discussed SDGs giving attentions at energy problems. As he mentioned, in Japan, the share of renewable energies is 10% below, and thermal power using LNG, petrol, and coal accounts of 80% above of the total energy supply. Of course, to increase the share of renewable energies and to improve energy use efficiency is vital. To pave one per cent of the earth's surface with solar power panels can afford to create all the necessary energies. However, because solar power generation fluctuates between daytime and nighttime and between fine and cloud days, we need to charge batteries and complementary power generation systems. Professor Kita emphasised importance to think from multiple perspectives to note that if we simply replace gasoline cars with electric vehicles, the environmental load on the contrary may increase.
Professor Yoshii firstly introduced the history of the environmental policies of the EU from the 1970s, and emphasised that climate change measures and the sustainable development have been one of most important topics since the Kyoto Protocol in 2002. As he mentioned, especially, as the 20-20-20 strategy in 2008 and the Europe 2020 in 2010 show, the EU has been working on the economic development strategy together with the climate change measures. The Europe Green Deal and the New Generation EU under the von der Leyen Commission also follow the compound way, and even the European Central Bank began a new stress check system by taking the climate change and environmental risks into the consideration.
In Q&A session, the students asked questions related to their interests and gained further understanding.
276 students attended this event and the evaluation show that more than 80% of them felt that the lectures were satisfactory and they may utilise this experience when they continue further studying SDGs.