CAETS annual event 2024

Helsinki, 15 July 2024

The CAETS Annual Event 2024, organised by the Finnish Academy of Technical Sciences, took place from 1 to 4 July 2024 in Helsinki, Finland. The focus of this year’s CAETS symposium was “Carbon Neutral Technologies and Society”. Over 150 experts from academia and industry from 26 countries discussed the importance of carbon-neutral technologies for sustainable development, climate change mitigation and society.

The technical symposium, which took place on 2 and 3 July, was open to the public for the first time in the history of the alliance of academies and was opened by the Finnish Minister of Science and Culture, Sari Multala. Exciting facts and approaches for a carbon-neutral society were presented to the audience. The focus was on technological approaches that could be applied throughout Europe.

acatech members Ulrich Wagner and Frank Behrendt are members of the CAETS Energy Working Group. After finalising the CAETS Energy Report 2022, which focuses on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the group presented the first draft of its new report and announced that it will be published at the end of the year.

The annual CAETS Communication Prize, which was awarded for the first time this year with €5,000 in prize money, aims to promote science and technology communication and is awarded for technical success stories and innovations with high potential. This year’s winner was Magdalena Zukowska from the Technical University of Poznan in Poland. In her video “Blueprints of Hope: The Path to 3D Personalised Prosthetics“, Dr Zukowska describes how technology and engineering can help to meet a growing medical need: Access to affordable, customised prosthetics and orthotics.

At the CAETS Council Meeting and the CAETS Board Meeting the Australian Academy ofEngineering and Technology took over the CAETS presidency and announced that the next CAETS annual conference will be held in Brisbane, Australia, in September 2025 on the topic of “Generations”. acatech took the opportunity to present initial details about the annual conference to be held in Munich in 2026 on the topic of “From a distance: Earth observation for Monitoring. Comprehension and Change”.