China Finland Research Seminar on STI Cooperation in Cleantech and Environment during NDIW 2015 in Shanghai 4th November

China - Finland bi-regional seminar on STI cooperation in Cleantech and Environment was held on November 4th in Shanghai, China as part of NDIW2015 Finland day. The high level event was organized by UniPID-FinCEAL Plus in cooperation with China - Finland Strategic ICT Alliance. The event was supported by Team Finland, Ministry of Education and Culture, Tekes, Ministry of Employment and Economy, Ministry for Foreign Affairs as well as other relevant entities from China and Finland.

China - Finland Bi-regional seminar on STI cooperation in Cleantech and Environment was held on November 4^th in Shanghai, China as part of the Nordic Design and Innovation Week 2015 (NDIW2015) Finland day. The high level event was organized by UniPID-FinCEAL Plus in cooperation with China - Finland Strategic ICT Alliance. The event was supported by Team Finland, Ministry of Education and Culture, Tekes, Ministry of Employment and Economy, Ministry for Foreign Affairs as well as other relevant entities from China and Finland.

The 1-day seminar gathered together over 50 experts on Cleantech, and Environmental Monitoring and Health, Urban Design and related areas from industry and academia as well as government representatives and other stakeholders from China and Finland and EU to present and discuss about key technologies in cleantech, environment monitoring and health aspects. The goal of the seminar was to provide opportunities for researchers and business and public sector representatives to get into detailed discussions on further cooperation.

The seminar was opened by the Chair of Espoo City Sustainable Development Program, Member of Espoo City Council and Vice Chairman of Helsinki Region Transport Sirpa Hertell and the Dean, Professor of the College of Design and Innovation Lou Yongqi from the Tongji University (China). The welcome speeches were followed by a keynote from the President of the European Committee of the Regions, Markku Markkula who gave an inspiring speech about EU-China Co-operation in Sustainable Development – Cities and Region Tackling Societal Challenges. After Markku Markkula’s speech, the seminar was divided into two parallel session, focusing on Cleantech and Urban Design, and Environment and Health.

The Cleantech & Urban Design session was opened by Professor Peter Lund from Aalto University (Finland) and he gave a very interesting speech about how China and Finland should join their forces in delivering the clean energy solutions on the global scale. In his speech Professor Lund concluded that energy-climate challenges cannot be solved without a strong effort in innovations and new technologies, and that systematic innovations and new materials will play an increasingly important role in the clean energy transition ahead and that combining Chinese and Finnish skills and know-how in the key areas could produce breakthrough solutions.
The second speaker, Professor ZhongXiang Zhang from Tianjin University (China) discussed about China’s carbon emissions trading pilots and their transition to a nationwide scheme. In his speech Professor Zhang presented key common and differing features of the pilots, compliance, key lessons learned and future development of carbon trading in China.
After a break the session continued with a speech from Professor Jarmo Suominen from Aalto University (Finland) about city, workplace, school and hospital-as-a-service platforms. Professor Suominen discussed about buildings becoming service platforms, service innovations driving human smart cities with an integrated mobility as a service and that there will be new shared use service innovations. In addition, he spoke about more sustainable solutions and new usage patterns, and more ecological solutions and local shared energy production.
The last speaker of the session Dr. Yunsheng Su from Tongji University (China) gave a speech about innovations in city planning and super smart citites and safety, sustainable service and smart security as some key components and showed some city planning examples e.g. in Shanghai area.

In the Environment and Health session Dr. Joni Kujansuu, University of Helsinki (Finland) gave a speech about their Beautiful China project introducing their goal to bring China’s cities up to European air-quality standards within a decade. Dr. Kujansuu stated that urban air can begin to be cleaned only if a comprehensive monitoring and modelling approach takes atmospheric chemistry into account and that it is important to know which hazardous pollutants are present and how they interact to generate secondary pollution. In addition there are challenges in controlling the air quality and also the indoor air quality is a problem. Dr. Kujansuu concluded that it is important to work towards sustainable adaptation and mitigation of climate change, disseminate the research findings as policy making processes, focus on training of multi-talented environmental and atmospheric experts and that reinforced aerosol, atmospheric chemistry and forest ecology instrument manufacturing enterprises are needed.
In his speech professor Hongjun Mao, Nankai University (China) revealed some interesting research results about urban transport emission and air quality with some background of their focal research areas, examples of vehicle emission testing and testing inventory in China. In addition, air quality simulation was discussed.
After the break the session continued with environment and health related topics. Professor Maija-Riitta Hirvonen from the University of Eastern Finland (Finland) gave a speech about air pollution as an issue of public health. In her speech she discussed about dual role of fine particles as impact on the health of populations and radiative force causing the climate change as well as the general health effects of the particles.
The last speaker of the session, Professor Cheng Gu, from Nangjing University (China) showed some interesting research results about nature clay catalyzed surface reactions and its environmental applications. Professor Gu gave a brief introduction to some key clay minerals, dioxins and their imbalances in the environment, and finally stated that e.g. certain types of nanomaterials offer a potential for remediation of many persistent contaminants in surface soils and sediments in the nature.

The sessions were followed by a panel discussion where experts from academia and industry in areas of environmental monitoring, environmental health and technology discussed the issues and solutions. The case of air quality and indoor solutions was elaborated as an illustrative example. After the panel session the day concluded with a Blue and White Night Finland Evening Reception Joint NDIW 2015 networking cocktails hosted by the Consulate General of Finland in Shanghai offering a more informal networking opportunity for experts from both regions.

On 3^th-4^th of November the Finnish delegation had an opportunity to participate the Cleanconnect Congress which offered the delegation academic members with their own business a chance to meet potential investors and partners to enable business and commercialization opportunities in China.

UniPID-FinCEAL Plus warmly thanks co-organizer China-Finland Strategic ICT Alliance, and the Consulate General of Finland in Shanghai for co-hosting the event and the evening reception. Special thanks also goes to Team Finland for their support, and all the Finnish speakers and participants for their active engagement. We hope that the event has managed to create links that enable more cooperation between our countries and regions in the near future.

Download the full programme and the concept note of the seminar.

Photos:Jarkko Mutanen and Kajsa Ekroos