Dalian forum pushes for better clean energy R&D

More than 400 guests from home and abroad, including renowned experts and researchers, have gathered on Friday to discuss the research and development of clean energy from an international prospective at the second International Forum on Clean Energy held in Northeast China’s coastal city Dalian from Aug 24-25.

The two-day event, co-organized by the National Energy Administration of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), has a theme of “multi-energy complementary strategy and technology”.

“A clean energy evolution is taking place across the whole world. The forum is dedicated to building a platform for an open and constructive dialogue about challenges and opportunities in future energy development,” Liu Zhongmin, director of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), said at the opening ceremony of the forum.

As one of China’s national-level science institutes, and the leading research center in clean energy, DICP has long focused on clean energy research.

Topics of discussion at the forum cover energy system reform, the clean use of fossil energy, the low-carbon economy and clean energy technologies.

“Global sustainable development faces a new situation, with the urgent goal of addressing climate change and accelerating the world’s energy transformation,” said He Jiankun, a climate change expert of Tsinghua University.

“For tackling climate change in the framework of sustainability, the core goal is to achieve a low-carbon transition in energy and the economy,” he said.

According to the experts, countries should focus on synergy in energy policies, cooperative planning and research, and technical changes.

“The world is growing like never before and all growth requires energy. But it demands the energy be produced and delivered in a new way with fewer emissions,” said Angelo Amorelli, the vice-president for International University Partnerships at BP who also manages the company’s group research teams.

“The key solutions to meet the dual challenges are to reduce emissions rather than promoting any one fuel as the answer, improve energy efficiency, as well as strengthen the regulation of carbon pricing,” Amorelli said.

As one of the world’s largest oil companies, BP has teamed up with Chinese institutes including CAS and Tsinghua University on a wide range of different technologies around clean energy.

The forum also addresses other hot topics, such as the importance of bioenergy in global renewable energy, the hydrogen energy economy, the electrification of energy, as well as the optimal utilization of China’s fossil energy resources.