Good Morning,Konichi Wa

Dear Tetsu Iida,

Dear (Mayor Fukushima)
Dear Ladise and Gentlemen,
First of all please let me echo all the thanks to Tetsu and his team and to Fukushima City to make this
important event possible.
the urgency of climate protection is already brought to our attention every day ; we only have to read
the newspapers:
Hurricanes in the Caribbean;
drought disasters in East Africa, in Southern Africa but also in California;
Floods not only in Southeast Asia and India, but also in Central Europe, also in Germany

Or-in Germany we would speak of a hint of heaven

Catastrophic forest fires in the Canadian subarctic area combined with unusually high temperatures
have in particular damaged the climate harmful oil sand explorations.
We all know that the energy generation and application is the most important source of GHG.
We all know that energy transformation is the key to limit climate to 2 or even the 1.5 degree Celcius. And
we all know as well that the available carbon budget is becoming tighter, each day of any reluctance to
take action.
We have reached a consensus in the Paris Agreement on achieving greenhouse gas neutrality in this
century. The Paris Agreement address the strong role of cities and regions for mitigation and adaptation
of climate change, for the first time in an international agreed climate document. At the same time, it calls
for more intensive cooperation between different levels of government and actors, as we are doing today
and tomorrow.

In the context, I have, of course, to mention the recent Habitat -the UN Conference on Sustainable
Urban Development in Quito as well.
The event has summarized the current trends, again, including 75% of all carbon dioxide emissions that
are caused in cities. However, this statement does not mean that cities are responsible for such a high
share of global GHG.
However, cities have options to act. I do not know if any think tank has ever assessed, whenever the

potentials are 10%, or 20%, or 30%, or even more or rather less. I havent also not found any indication in
the very new and very excellent IRENA Brochure Renewable Energy in Cities which compiled numerous
examples from the whole world, how communities can act to emerge RE.
Certainly, different figures will emerge in individual countries and different size of cities. However, these
numbers are not really important.
Important is, that the cities have opportunities to act. A wide variety of examples will be provided today and
tomorrow.
As a central governmental representative I have to underline that governments have to support cities and
regions to identify and implement their actions, by
Providing supporting financial programs;
By extending the responsibilities of cities;
However, also by setting legal requirements to cities, for example in Japan, where cities with a size of
more than 200,000 people have to create a climate protection plan.
Cities have considerable potential for action for climate protection.
Particularly convincing are always lessons learned from pilot projects, also so-called good practices.
This event is as well part of an intensive German-Japanese week to enhance cooperation on climate and
energy on city and rational level.
So you can see a visible strong German delegation in this event. Five German institutions including the
Ministry for Environment are supporting this even, in particular by covering travel costs for German experts
from cities, energy corporations in cities, citizen energy initiatives, scientific communities and NGOs. All
of them will contribute substantially on how to bring RE in cities forward. All of them will make visible, that
the German Energiewende is not only-and perhaps to a minor part -a governmental story. You may know
that Germany has for example increased the share of RE in the electricity mix from 5% in 2000 until 33%
today. RE are the most important pillar to meet are climate targets as well. This transition process happens
as well on city level, on regional level, on citizens level and-of course-on business level. We want to
communicate our lessons learnt. However, the German Delegation want to learn as well from the
experience from other countries.
I wish you a successful meeting.