On October 5th, the eighth annual Cross-strait Climate Change and Energy Sustainable Development Forum opened at Wuhan University. 170 experts and scholars from Chinese mainland and Taiwan attended the meeting, including 20 members of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) and Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE).
This year’s forum, under the theme of “developing low-carbon energy to deal with climate change”, was sponsored by the CAE’s Energy and Mining Engineering Academic Division and the Taiwan Institute for Sustainable Energy. WHU served as the host.
At the opening ceremony, WHU’s president Li Xiaohong introduced WHU’s history and academic excellence. He pointed out that holding the forum at WHU would contribute to WHU’s strong focus in energy and environmental disciplines as well as further cooperation between WHU and its sister universities. President Li also hoped that the forum would strengthen ties between scholars on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
In his speech, the vice-governor of Hubei Province Guo Shenglian said holding the forum at WHU made Hubei Province proud and would lead to new knowledge, methodology, and use of low-carbon energy technology for industries in Hubei and a more resource-conversing, environment-friendly Wuhan.
The president of the CAE, Zhou Ji, emphasized that despite the tremendous modernization of the Chinese mainland, China need to urgently transform its economic development pattern to a more sustainable model in the face of increasingly fierce international competition and serious energy and resource restrictions.
The vice-president of CAE, Xie Kechang, contributed to the forum by making a keynote report entitled “Chinese Mainland Unconventional Natural Gas Development and Utilization Strategy Research.” Afterwards, five other experts gave further scientific reports.
At the academic exchange, participants exchanged the latest technological advancements, research developments and promising new research areas. They concentrated on issues in energy development and utilization, regional environment and climate change, policy strategy and cross-strait cooperation system, and low-carbon technology and life.
The “Cross-Strait Climate Change and Energy Sustainable Development Forum” (initially entitled the “Cross-Strait Energy and Environment Sustainable Development Technological Conference”) is a high level academic exchange activity initiated by scholars from Chinese mainland and Taiwan and hosted by a university on an alternating side of the Strait. Since its first session in 2005, it has served as an important platform for cross-strait exchange in energy and environmental knowledge.
