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Prof. Dr. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber is the Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Potsdam University. He chairs the German Advisory Council on Global Change and advises the President of the European Commission on energy and climate change issues.

The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) has established itself as one of the world's most distinguished climate impact research institutions since its foundation in 1992. What key research priorities has PIK set?

The Potsdam Institute is one of the world’s first scientific institutions to have been explicitly set up to address complex questions in a truly interdisciplinary approach. Climate change and its impact, the starting point for most projects at PIK, addresses various topics. PIK researchers investigate Earth system processes and how human activities interfere with them. There are the "typical"climate change issues, such as rising sea levels and the stability of the ice sheets. But we also focus on the regional impact, for example, on agriculture or biodiversity. Refining our models to be able to develop projections on a regional scale is one of the main perspectives of contemporary climate impact research. Another main perspective is to map out strategies for adapting to the unavoidable global warming and for mitigating dangerous climate change. This, especially, is where Earth system analysis and economics meet - also in person, if you like. PIK is one of only a few places where physicists and economists work on the same project and, in some cases, even share offices.

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The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference showed us how difficult it is to agree on politically binding climate protection targets at the UN level. Can science and research contribute to making the follow-up conference in Mexico a success?

This is a difficult subject. Reading some German, British or American newspapers, you might get the idea that scientists are not only pulling the strings on climate policy, but are even about to overthrow governments worldwide! Reality, however, is very different, of course. Just look at what we got from the Copenhagen Conference, the assembly that was supposed to seal a just global deal on protecting the climate.

The delegates merely agreed to "take note" of the Copenhagen Accord that, again, only "recognises the scientific view", namely that the increase in global temperature should be kept to below two degrees Celsius. I do think that recognising the two degree goal marks an important step forward, but it falls way short of the expectations the very same delegates raised with their many copious speeches on the urgency of climate protection. Now, science can evaluate this outcome, achieved with the participation of PIK researchers. The reduction targets submitted to the Copenhagen Accord leave the world heading for a mean temperature increase of three degrees Celsius or more by 2100.

This is where many hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific studies indicating that we can probably manage climate impact of less than two degrees warming, but that we will probably fail to do so if we go above this, lose their meaning. Science can point out what action or inaction will probably lead to. But whether society does or does not take action remains a decision to be made by political leaders.

In December 2009, the European Union launched the Knowledge and Innovation Community CLIMATE-KIC with the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a consortium of 16 top European universities, research institutes, companies and regions in total. What role will PIK play here and what other German partners are contributing?

PIK is one of five academic core partners of the CLIMATE-KIC. It will lead the German consortium consisting of three more partners: TU Berlin, TU Munich and the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam. The KlimaCampus Hamburg, an interdisciplinary research network of the University of Hamburg and independent institutes, and the Forschungszentrum Jülich also joined up prior to the initiative’s implementation. But for the CLIMATE-KIC to deliver the required innovative step changes, it was especially important to join forces with partners from the corporate world.

With these ten companies on board, our consortium brings world-class research to bear as well as expertise in the fields of implementation and commercialisation. For PIK researchers this provides an excellent opportunity to apply modelling skills to help bring about the crucial innovations required for protecting the climate. By so doing, we can contribute to the roadmaps needed for transforming the European infrastructure into a system that allows for low carbon energy, production and mobility, sustainable cities and sustainable land use.

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What are the priorities of EIT?

EIT was set up to address Europe’s innovation gap, to drive European sustainable growth and competitiveness by stimulating world-leading innovation. Besides the CLIMATE-KIC with its focus on climate change mitigation and adaptation, the KIC InnoEnergy concentrates on sustainable energy and the EIT ICT Labs on the future information and communication society. I, personally, attach most importance to EIT’s young academics programme. We need to train people to cope with future challenges.

From where will the network operate? Will new structures be created to this end?

The network will operate at five locations, called Co-Location Centres: London, Zurich and the Berlin, Paris and Randstad metropolitan areas. Apart from these, we have managed to involve regions across Europe as laboratories, so to speak, for pilot projects. This is a crucial step in bridging the gap from theory to the ultimate test bed – everyday common practice. It also provides an example of the exciting prospects of the CLIMATE-KIC in really being able to hatch ideas from first thought all the way through to application.

Thank you very much for the information on PIK and its role in EIT.

For more information about EIT, please see our article in the “Current R&D policy” section.

Contact: Potsdam-Institut für Klimafolgenforschung e.V., Uta Pohlmann presse@pik-potsdam.de

More information: www.pik-potsdam.de http://eit.europa.eu/ www.climate-kic-proposal.org/