
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 4th 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.

On 3th-4th 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