The Covid-19 outbreak does not make climate change issues out of sight to ACCEPT.

Last week on Friday, ACCEPT initiated Phase 2- In-House Sharing Session 1 and discussed five different topics under a common theme regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and climate crisis via online webinar. These topics ranging from the COVID-19 survey to the link between COVID-19 pandemic and climate crisis was delivered by five speakers from ACE. Overall participants who attended were nearly 30 people.

The opening topic discussed “What we have learned from the COVID-19 survey” was delivered by Rika Safrina. COVID-19 survey was conducted during the 17-31 March 2020 period and was filled by 401 respondents – 25 countries who worked in the business sector, academia, and government. As its main objective, the survey revealed some facts about how serious COVID-19 issues, COVID-19 vs energy, and COVID-19 vs climate.

Going forward, Nadhilah Shani showed the second topic regarding the “Impact of the pandemic on energy demand and CO₂ emissions”. The lecture material highlighted COVID-19 impact on electricity and climate problems globally. Particularly, this session also explained further about implications between COVID-19 and the energy sector.

The following discussion about the “Enhancing resilience community with renewable energy” was performed by Akbar Swandaru. He expressed that the Resilience community could be enhanced through renewable energy. Beyond more resistance to COVID-19 shocks, Renewable energy is believed to create a better society by increased employment.

The next topic was discussed by Rizky Aditya Putra. He discussed how to increase community resilience with energy efficiency. Beginning with the impacts arising from COVID-19 on energy consumption, he discussed the importance of energy efficiency and conservation, mainly due to a significant increase in the use of lamps and air conditioners. Various methods that can be applied are discussed, focusing on simple steps that can be applied in everyday life.

The last discussion was presented by the last speaker and our moderator in this discussion, Dr. Hoyyen Chan. She compared various points regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and Climate Change. It appears that different treatments occur, COVID-19 is taken seriously than climate change. Though both are equally threatening life and the economy. From there, it was discussed that COVID-19 teaches climate change activists to make clearer stages, clear actions and reactions, state the threat as concrete as possible, and also implement international cooperation better.

Last but not least, we must be always ready to change ourselves, we must be prepared with various possibilities in the future. For more detailed information, please take a look at our presentation.

For more details, please see the presentation file here and feel free to contact the ACCEPT team if you need any further information. Stay safe and don’t forget to check out our COVID-19 page for more information on impacts of COVID-19 to energy and climate sector in ASEAN!