Speaker
Description
Belgium’s transition to carbon neutrality shows both strong momentum and persistent fragmentation. One of the core missions of the Helios Foundation — a new Belgian philanthropic initiative — is to act as a catalyst for effective solutions that help reach carbon neutrality. A decarbonization roadmap for Belgium — developed with Bain & Company — analyses emission baselines and trends, key sector levers, and transition barriers. It prioritizes 34 investment themes based on greenhouse gas impact per euro spent.
Building on this top-down view, the Helios Foundation launched a national call for ambitious and high-impact projects. The call sought projects with significant, demonstrable, additional, direct, and permanent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, with systemic co-benefits and no negative spillovers. The 345 letters of intent received offer an unprecedented bottom-up snapshot of Belgium’s decarbonization landscape — spanning sectors from industry and energy, to transport, construction and agriculture; actors from startups to multinationals, municipalities, civil society and research institutions; and interventions ranging from novel technological solutions to circular-economy approaches, Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage, data platforms, as well as organisational transformation and behavioural-changes initiatives.
Together, they reveal a vibrant and under-connected ecosystem with untapped potential to accelerate Belgium’s decarbonization significantly. Strengthening collaboration between actors and aligning funding and policy support could unlock this potential and allow this ecosystem to flourish and deliver. In this presentation, we will summarize the main take aways from both the top-down roadmap and bottom-up ecosystem mapping, and describe some of the funded projects as examples of promising solutions.
| If your abstract is not accepted for an oral presentation, would you be interested in presenting it as a poster instead? | No |
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| If accepted by the Scientific Board, I agree to have my presentation/poster and abstract published on the Belgian Climate Centre websites and social media. | Yes |
