Climate change, energy security and peak oil are challenges that industries, governments and citizens need to tackle in a common effort. The transformation of the energy sector offers a still widely untapped opportunity for addressing these challenges. On June 9, 2010, an international Riverside Chat brought together Ulrich Kelber, MdB and C. Brad Williams, Deputy Secretary of Energy, Oklahoma, USA to discuss ways to achieve 100% renewable energies.

Ulrich Kelber is member of the Bundestag since September 2000 and deputy chairman of the parliamentary group of the SPD in the Bundestag, responsible for the areas of environment, nature conservation, nuclear safety, food, agriculture, consumer protection and sustainability. C. Brad Williams is Deputy Secretary of Energy in Oklahoma since March 2009. In this position, he serves as the liaison between the Governor’s office and a number of regulatory and trade associations for the oil and gas, electricity, and alternative energy industries.

The Riverside Chat centered on the opportunities and challenges linked to 100% renewable energies, covering both the European and the US perspectives.

Topics of the discussion included:

• impacts of feed-in tariffs
• potential for renewable energies in different geographical areas
• benefits of renewable energies independent of climate change mitigation
• potential role of US-States in fostering renewable energies.

The audience included participants and speakers of the Smart Energy Dialogue 2010 and of the visitors programme “Green Jobs – Green Growth: The New Energy Economy”, sponsored as part of the Transatlantic Climate Bridge by the German Federal Foreign Office. It brought a group of high-level representatives from the Southern Governors’ Association to Germany.

The evening was co-sponsored by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

The discussion was moderated by Benjamin Görlach, Senior Fellow and Head of Economics and Policy Assessment at the Ecologic Institute.