On 8th – 9th December 2021, the China-UK Workshop on Energy Storage and Low-Carbon Buildings sponsored by the National Science Foundation of China and British Council was held by the China-UK Low Carbon College of Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) in Lin-gang, Shanghai. The event was co-organized by the Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources of University College London (UCL) and coordinated by Prof. Changying Zhao of SJTU and Prof. Raimund Bleischwitz and Dr. Dimitrios Rovas of UCL.

The workshop brought together researchers from China and the UK working together in an interactive and collaborative fashion to identify and address challenges associated with the decarbonization of the building stock, attracting over 200 experts, scholars, and low-carbon business representatives online and offline.

The event started with a welcome speech delivered by Xuemin Xu, Vice President of SJTU, who extended her warm greetings to the participants on behalf of SJTU and hoped that through this workshop, Chinese and UK researchers would be able to come up with innovate ideas to promote green and low-carbon development in the building sector.

Prof. Raimund Bleischwitz, Director of the UCL Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources, in his opening remarks, introduced the low carbon research at UCL and hoped that the scholars attending the workshop would explore more opportunities for joint UK-China research collaborations in the area of low-carbon buildings, contributing to the achievement of the net zero goal.

At the workshop, 29 renowned scholars from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, University College London, Tsinghua University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhejiang University, Xi’an Jiaotong University, South China University of Technology, Shanghai Research Institute of Building Sciences, etc., delivered talks online and offline, sharing their research achievements in energy storage and low-carbon architecture. Apart from university academics, a few enterprise representatives also joined the workshop and delivered talks on the low carbon planning and practice of their companies, including Hong Wang, Chairman of Jiangsu Pioneer Energy Materials Co., Ltd., Jingyu Zhou, Vice President of Arcplus Group PLC, and Hong Rao, Chief Planner of China Planning Team, ARUP.

This workshop greatly promoted the cross integration of energy storage and low-carbon buildings and the innovation of technology clusters, providing an opportunity for experts from all sectors to find out solutions to achieving low-carbon cities and zero-carbon buildings.