Bold Leaps and Action Planned for Innovations in Climate Resilience Conference in March 2023

The effects of climate change are affecting the lives of people in America and across the globe. One does not have to look far to find examples of extreme heat, fire, flood, and droughts to personally feel an impact on our health, home, food, and overall wellbeing. Climate change is not a concept—it is a personal reality. As governments around the world mobilize to invest in mitigation strategies, we all are left searching for positive news and a need to make a positive change.

Action driven by milestones is the foolproof route to resilience. By taking purposeful, forward-looking steps toward shared goals, we can bend the arc of Earth’s future toward a safer planet for us all to inhabit and combat the negative circumstances that our climate reality is generating.

That is why the theme of the second annual Innovations in Climate Resilience conference (ICR23) is “Bold Leaps and Action”. We are convening world-renowned experts in Columbus, Ohio, March 28-30, 2023, who represent technologies and ideas from government, private industry and academia. Together, we’ll share breakthroughs and plans for action to implement strategies and concrete, verifiable solutions to curb the effects of human-made global climate change.

The ICR23 #Climate23 conference will focus on five theme areas:

• Climate Risk Analysis and National Security
• Resilient Built Infrastructure
• Ecosystem Restoration, Sustainability and Other Innovative Climate Solutions
• Convergence with Health: Tools and Innovations to Prevent or Combat Climate Effects on Health
• Net-Zero Economy: Energy Technology, Decision-Making, and Capacity Expansion

We believe the future is ours to make and mold, and participation is key to positive outcomes. We’ll have more information for you soon about ICR23 (#Climate23), including information on participating in the technical program by submitting an abstract, an agenda, featured speakers and more. Until then, here is an on-demand list of our keynote speaker and panel videos from the first conference to get you ready to change the future.

At the inaugural conference #Climate22 in March of 2022, participants engaged with speakers and panels from nearly every dimension of climate science and technology to discuss the current state of research and action on climate resilience. “I saw policymakers converging on policy priorities and directions coming from different perspectives,” said Dr. Mark Peters, Battelle’s Executive Vice President of National Lab Operations. “I also saw a strong shift from detailed understanding of the impacts of climate change to starting down the path of understanding what we need to do to mitigate and adapt.” To that end, Peters also saw the emergence of test beds and associated modeling and analysis for mitigation and adaption in a variety of geographic and environmental settings as a key future direction.

Speakers from across the government interagency expressed the desire for help and collaboration with academia and private industry. Pat Hoffman, Acting Assistant Secretary in the DOE’s Office of Electricity, said “Help us now!” during her speech and asked for utilities to help the government with modeling. Her thoughts were echoed by Dr. Sally Benson, Deputy Director for Energy in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. “We need an energy transition roadmap,” she said.

The initial conference was a good start, but now action is needed. “We’re on Spaceship Earth together,” said former NASA astronaut and founder and President of Endless Frontier Associates Dr. John Grunsfeld. “We need a systems engineering approach and earth systems models, not climate models. Geoengineering is too scary because of the unintended consequences but we’re doing it now by pumping the atmosphere full of greenhouse gases. It’s not working out that well.”

And in the meantime, we call upon the many motivated, brilliant, strong-willed people that are working to ensure the future of our planet. Battelle has been working to deliver solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges for nearly a century, and we’ve made it a priority to advance innovations in climate resilience. We are committed to action and innovation by building bridges across scientific domains to solve this problem of a lifetime and to use science to benefit society.