Lund University was a sponsor of the conference The Global Grid Greening the Grid for a Sustainable Future, which took place on 28 October in New York.

The conference was held at Nasdaq and in accordance with tradition we helped to close the stock exchange that day. Afterwards we went out and watched the big screen in Times Square, where Lund University’s logo was displayed for what was probably the first time.

On the evening before the conference, a climate-neutral dinner was held at the Swedish restaurant Aquavit. Researchers from Lund University had been given the task of calculating the energy consumption and Professor Lars J. Nilsson presented the calculations for the climate-neutral dinner:

Our assessment shows that we are about to enjoy a dinner containing about 1 200 calories. But how much does it take to bring this to the table? Doing a life cycle analysis (cultivation, fertilising, harvest, transport, processing, etc.) shows us that it actually takes twice the amount of energy to bring the food to our plates. On the other hand if we had a less environmentally aware dinner with frozen shrimp, beef, pre-baked bread and imported tropical fruit, we would need to put in six times the energy to bring the food to the plate. That difference in energy for one portion lets you keep a modern LED lamp burning for three hours a day for one year.