The Paris Agreement prioritizes finance, technology and capacity-building to rapidly deploy renewable and sustainable energy technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in answer to the challenge of climate change. As these technologies grow globally many aspects of the natural, human and built environment will need to be rethought. This talk examines the mysticism of decarbonization and the sustainable energy transition considering the hubris of people balanced with the planet and profits.

Dr. Foley, Editor in Chief of Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is a Reader and Advisor of Studies with the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in Queen’s University Belfast. She is a member of the Editorial Board of Elsevier’s Renewable Energy and the Editorial Panel of the Institution of Civil Engineers Proceedings in Transport. She is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of Engineers Ireland and a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Authority and a member of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS) and Power Energy Society (PES). She has a BE (Hons) (1996) (Civil & Environmental Engineering) and a PhD (2011) (Energy Engineering) from University College Cork and an MSc (1999) (Transportation Engineering) from Trinity College Dublin. Dr. Foley returned to full-time academia in 2009 after 12 years in industry, since then she has accessed more than €3 million in research. Her research focuses on wind forecasting, wind power integration, power and gas systems, and transport electrification.