Keynotes - Plenary Session

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• Samantha Burgess (Deputy Director - Copernicus Climate Change Service) - State of the climate system: Insights on European and global climate trends on warming, extremes, and impacts

• Myles Allen (University of Oxford) - Geological Net Zero: How we will stop climate change – eventually
   

Parallel Sessions 1

Trajectory towards climate neutrality in Belgium

• Julien Pestiaux (CLIMACT) - Progress toward climate neutrality: Monitoring materials, jobs, and economic impacts during transition implementation in Belgium

• Emily Taylor (SPF Santé Publique et Environnement) - Where does Belgium stand in its transition to climate neutrality in 2050? Lessons from a progress monitoring tool

• Eric Lambin (UCLouvain) - Mapping Belgium’s decarbonisation landscape: From roadmap to real-world initiatives

• Nicolas Ghuys (UCLouvain) - Future of energy systems within planetary boundaries: A new methodological framework integrating planetary boundaries into energy system optimisation for absolute environmental sustainability

Developing climate neutrality in the transport sector: opportunities and challenges

• Edwin van Hassel (UAntwerp) - Critical water levels and systemic shocks: Impacts on container transport along the Rhine-Alpine corridor

• Françoise Bartiaux (UCLouvain) - Commuting by private car or by company car to Brussels: Signs of change?

• Nikolaas Van den Steen (VUB) - Scaling electric vehicle charging infrastructure: A data-informed policy strategy in Brussels

• Eline Bens (AP University of Applied Sciences and Arts Antwerp) - The impact of CSRD on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) - A hands-on tool for calculating greenhouse gas emissions

 

Climate finance and economic instruments

• Jelle Meus (KU Leuven) - Barriers to efficient carbon pricing: Policy risk, myopic behaviour, and financial constraints

• Felicien Pagnon (ICHEC Brussels Management School) - Green bonds in Belgium: Mapping stakeholders to improve their effectiveness

• Axelle Vincent (UAntwerp) - From risk bearing to risk prevention: Exploring the potential of insurance companies as investors in flood-mitigating nature-based solutions

• Siem Jan Koopman (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) - A dynamic decomposition for the environmental Kuznets curve: A state-space framework

Parallel Sessions 2

Climate neutrality and just transition in the electricity sector

• Valeria Zambianchi (UCLouvain) - Renewable energy communities: Decentralisation and justice throughout the energy transition

• Caroline Bottu (UCLouvain) - Where to locate wind and solar energy projects? A spatial mismatch between 
  project submission and approval

• Ruben Borgers (KU Leuven) - Quantifying the near-future wind energy production over the North Sea using a novel statistical–dynamical approach to GCM downscaling

• Ward Winters (KU Leuven) - Cost of inter-farm wake losses in the Belgian North Sea

 

The behavioural science of climate action

• Luca Fehér (ULB) - Green words, mixed actions: Public reactions to inconsistent environmental 
  politics

• Zoé Bollen (UCLouvain) - How do we make pro-environmental decisions? Using eye-tracking to trace the 
  processes underlying pro-environmental decision-making

• Sarah Kusch (UGent) - Investigating the ‘cognitive effort paradox’ in pro-environmental behaviour using consequential experimental paradigms

• Emma Martens (UGent) - Transitioning towards sustainable heating: A mixed-methods study of heat pump acceptance among Flemish homeowners

 

How to better communicate climate science to policy?
Discussion and panel session with:

• Noel Baker (BIRA-IASB)

• Jean-Pascal van Ypersele (Plateforme wallonne GIEC)

• Inge Jonckheere (European Space Agency)

• Bert van Loon (European Commission, DG CLIMA)

• Marc Vanolsbeeck (Belspo/ULB)

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Parallel Sessions 3

The interplay between climate change and ecosystems

• Cécile Renier (UCLouvain) - Global climate and biodiversity targets on a limited and used planet

• Essomandan Urbain Kokah (ULiège) - Seasonal shifts in temperate grassland productivity under future climate scenarios

• Viktor Van de Velde (UGent) - Land-use driven depletion of nutrient cations potentially puts a break on 
  carbon accumulation rates in central African tropical forests

• Marilyn Roland (UAntwerp) - ICOS Belgium: from greenhouse gas observations to policy support

 

Enabling a just transition towards climate neutrality

• Pascale Vielle (UCLouvain) - Institutional barriers and strategies for a social-ecological protection 
  system in Europe

• Paul Boutsen (Het Vervolg/COALFACE) - Just Transition pathways in Belgium: a policy perspective on Limburg’s transition through the strategic reuse of industrial heritage

• Kyra Verbruggen (UAntwerp) - What matters? Recognition justice in the development of the Flemish 
  subsurface

• Deborah Lambert (VUB) - Exploring urban futures through the lens of a just transition: Four scenarios of social-ecological inequalities in Brussels by 2050
   

Effective climate services for better decisions

• Dirk Lauwaet (VITO) - A public database of future heat stress in 140 cities to examine the potential for heat reduction via climate-smart urban development

• Inne Vanderkelen (KU Leuven/RMI) - National climate scenarios for Belgium

• Sylvain Marchi (RMI) - Delivering usable climate information for better decisions: Bias correction and interactive selection of representative climate projections for Belgium

• Nele Veldeman (VITO) - From climate data to public health action: A climate service for vector
  and vector-borne disease monitoring and management in Belgium