CISBAT 2009: International Scientific Conference - Renewables in a changing climate - From Nano to Urban Scale

Centred on research and development in solar energy applications to the built environment, the international conference CISBAT 2009 highlighted a large number of interesting technological innovations. The discoveries and developments presented by scientists from five continents are all part of the effort to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions generated by buildings. Renewables are expected to play a very important role against the global threat of a changing climate, even more so as 2009 will hopefully see a new “Post-Kyoto” era in their favour to be initiated at the COP15 United National Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen (Denmark).“Anti-crisis” programmes, which have been launched by several countries in favour of job creation within the framework of a “Green New Deal” will also contribute to sustain the solar momentum.The organisers of the CISBAT Conference, financially supported by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE), therefore had no problem convincing their academic partners - Cambridge University (CU) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - to collaborate in the organisation of this event on the EPFL campus. More than 200 participants from 30 different countries were present during the two conference days and we are confident that they will be even more numerous at the next edition, as feedback from attendees encourages the organisers to increase the size and the duration of the CISBAT conference.