The International Online Seminar was held on 28 March 2025 on the topic «The Role of Fossil Fuels in a Decarbonized World» and served as a preparatory platform for the annual Internatinal Scientifc Conference «Energetika XXI: Economy, Policy, Ecology».
The ongoing disasters attributable to climate change are strong signals for action to reduce GHG emissions. The conclusions of the IPCC report on staying within 1.5 °C being equivalent to keeping with a CO2 budget and achieving net zero GHG emissions by 2050 are widely accepted. At the same time securing reliable energy supply to a world population, increasing to 10 billion people by 2050, is a task which cannot be met by renewables alone in this time frame in spite of the tremendous progress of PV and batteries. While natural gas and even coal industry can be successfully adapted to the carbon neutrality, this looks more challenging for oil. The question is what combination of intermittent renewable energy marked up by batteries and of traditional fossil fuels but with CCS can meet this dual challenge. This raises questions of technology development and deployment, but also of different regional approaches and of using existing investment and infrastructure.

Two session and a discussion took place within the seminar. Representatives from Germany, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Turkey participated in the discussion on the topic. The next workshop on energy will be held in Budapest in hybrid format.