Czech Business Today

Always busy! If not working on an opinion as a rapporteur, I closely follow the points of interest in such earthly issues as European Innovation Partnership in Water and many others. The mentioned above deals with a concise and focused approach to innovation processes, and I have had a number of comments (hopefully) accepted! 

If the innovation is orchestrated and focused on the most important issues of particular river basins, it can improve water management efficiency as well as access to this, ever scarcer, resource. The most exciting week, in my view, was the first one in October. I managed to organise a critical discussion on energy issues and the transition to the low-carbon economy. The special guest of honour was Professor Vaclav Smil. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His interdisciplinary research includes the studies of energy systems (resources, conversions, and impacts), environmental change (particularly global biogeochemical cycles), and the history of technical advances and interactions among energy, environment, food, economy, and population. He is the author of more than thirty books and three hundred papers on these subjects and has lectured widely in North America, Europe, and Asia. In 2010 he was noted by Foreign Policy magazine as #49 on its list of the 100 most influential thinkers in the world. His incisive remarks on many energy and climate-change policy issues took aback the representatives of the EC and pleased all of us, who call for introducing common sense and basics of physics in this political discussion. 

In March next year, he will attend the Energy Congress in Prague, and his book “Energy Myths and Reality” will be published in the Czech language! It is a really very topical book nowadays! I do not mention the conference on woodworking industry in the EESC in greater extent: it was focused on maintaining competitiveness of forest industries: very much, a follow-up of my opinion. 

The thrilling event last week was a visit to the Finnish Olkiluoto nuke: not only, because such an immense project as such, but also because of quite a unique business model in practice: however, it deserves a special, more detailed analysis in one of the next issues!

Josef Zbořil
Member of EESC
Group I – Employers