In the winter of 2018, due to unstable meteorological condition, Beijing has already set off the yellow air pollution alert three times. On December 3rd, the 4th Bluetech International Clean Air Conference was held in Beijing. Around 300 participants from national and international experts, government representatives, representatives of technical enterprises, think tanks and representatives of environmental organizations, has gathered together to discuss the policy trend and technical solutions to curb smog pollution and speed up to pace of China’s blue sky battle. “As a very important force of society participation, Bluetech Clean Air Alliance（BCAA）has made a great contribution. Since the establishment in 2013, BCAA is always focusing on air quality improvement and air pollution control, has done a lot of supportive work on policy making by sharing international experience, and on innovative clean air technology promotion” said Chief scientist of Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences Chai Fahe.
“After four years of effort, Bluetech International Clean Air Conference has already developed as the largest annual professional forum in the clean air field in China. In these four years, we have witnessed the flourishing Bluetech, at the meanwhile, we also make efforts to provide these technologies more applications and demonstration opportunities. Today, we launched Yan'an clean heating technology pilot project. Before that, BCAA had already carried out technology demonstration projects in Shenzhen and Changzhou, and now Yan'an has joined. We hope to help more innovative technologies find opportunities of demonstration and applications through our demonstration mechanism and to accelerate restoring blue sky for China.” said Tonny Xie, Director of Bluetec Clean Air Alliance. “The traditional coal fire heating not only causes indoor air pollution that is harmful to health but also emit a large amount of black carbon. Black carbon has a strong global warming effect, Yan’an’s clean heating project is expected to bring co-benenfit to both reduce air pollution and GHG emissions. BCAA has extensive experience on clean heating technology assessment in Beijing-Hebei-Tianjin region, we are very delighted to cooperate with BCAA in Yan’an.” said Yang Peidan, Executive Director of C Team.
At present, new energy, energy conservation and environmental protection, new energy vehicles and other fields China’s key developing industrial fields, but most environmental enterprises are weak in their patent strategy design and systematic protection, which result in lack of patent and innovation protection. The conference held a panel on "cultivating high-value patents for clean technology" to call on the government, enterprises, investment institutions and industrial organizations to work together to promote the high-quality development of the clean technology industry based on high-value patents."Our country's patents development has entered a stage from quantitative changing to qualitative changing, and many foreign countries like the United States and Japan have gone through this stage.” said Xie Xiaoyong, Secretary-general of China Intellecture Property Society " We can sum up in 16 words for what the Haidian district government does about intellectual property: creating a suitable environment, issuing related policies, cultivating new people and spreading knowledge. I think if the government can do well in these four parts, the work of high-value patents can certainly be done well. " said by Gu Yongjiu, deputy director of Administrative Committee of Zhongguancun Haidian Science Park IP Office.
The conference also invited a number of Chinese and foreign experts to share the experience and ideas of various cities on air quality management, the cities include California, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, New Delhi, India and Hong Kong, China, etc. Scoot Christopher Dunn, Vice President for Southeast Asia of AECOM, said that the city planning should take into account the needs and development of the next 15 years, which is very important to realize the low-carbon development. Zhu Shu, secretariat of ICLEI East Asia, said that he would invite officials from different government departments to hold meetings regularly and organize relevant knowledge sharing forums or training so that the East Asian cities can better communicate with each other". Hong Kong has been improving its air quality since 2005, at that time, Hong Kong and Guangdong Province jointly set up a working group and many achievements have been made in regional atmospheric quality. However, in the future, environmental protection should not only be confined to the environmental departments, but also have a development perspective and extend to other departments so that the integrity of cooperation can be increased. "
Jiang Kejuan, Senior Researcher of Energy Research Institute, said that the control of China's smog is accelerating the clean transformation of China's energy structure and has a strong synergistic effect on climate change." Basically, we should consider both carbon and smog reduction at the same when conducting research." Said Jiang Kejun. The conference also set up a panel to draw attention to synergic control on air pollution and GHG reduction, with representatives from Carbon Trust, WWF, C Team, Honeywell and Changzhou Research Academy of Environmental Sciences participating in the discussion.
At the conference, BCAA also released the China Air Quality Management Assessment Report 2018 and announced the winners Bluetech Award 2018. A total of 66 technology applications from 12 countries took part in this contest, and 7 technologies have won this year’s Bluetech award, 1 technology was selected as the Bluetech Future Unicorn, 6 technologies were nominated to be Bluetech Future Stars, and 15 technology companies have been chosen into Bluetech Award Finalist. "The Blue International Clean Conference is a great innovation activity. It has employed an innovative assessment methodology, with support from think-tanks, research institutes and participation from enterprises, to find advanced technology for the environment. As an administrative department, we particularly favor learn more new technologies through this channel. Moreover, we hope to realize efficient social production through the new technologies. " said Yang Chaofei, Former Chief Engineer of MEP.
The 4th Bluetech International Clean Air Conference was hosted by Bluetech Clean Air Alliance and co-hosted by Innovation Center for Clean-air Solutions, Council of Industry and Technology Alliance in Z-park and Zhongguancun International Environment Protection Industry Promotion Center, and received strong support from 20 organizations including Administrative Committee of Zhongguancun Haidian Science Park, World Bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency China Office, C Team, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, AECOM and Innotrack Intellectual Property Law Firm.
