(22 May 2012) The Centre for global dialogue and cooperation, a private sector initiative, organized their annual meeting on the social aspects of energy policy. Speakers and panels addressed energy trends in the context of social development, social expectations, energy reforms and public perceptions, democracy vs economic power. EPSU’s Deputy General Secretary spoke in one of the panels and addressed the background to austerity, the impact of the coordinated austerity, the deregulation of the electricity sector and its consequences based as it is on the wrong economic theory and the importance of ensuring addressing global warming is based on just transition and decent work principles as agreed in Cancun Another speaker in the panel was Alberto Pototschnig, the director of the European Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulation (ACER) and the mayor of the Austrian village of Gussing which has gone into renewable energy including in gas and fuels and generated jobs and rural renewal through this.
Other speakers included former head of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe Erhard Busek who was outspoken in his support for access to energy as a human right and has been influential in ensuring the social dimension to the Energy Community, former President of Bulgaria Petar Stoyanov, world chess champion Anatoly Karpov, now deputy head of the natural resources, environment and ecology committee of the Russian DUMA and former US president Bill Clinton. All spoke on the importance of the social dimension to ensure public acceptance of some of the mayor energy changes and rising energy prices. The meeting took place on 17-18 May 2012, in Vienna.
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