On 19 March, CAS President LU Yongxiang held talks with visiting Group Chief Executive of British Petroleum (BP) Lord John Browne in Beijing. Both parties expressed confidence in developing a complementary partnership between them.
On 19 March, CAS President LU Yongxiang held talks with visiting Group Chief Executive of British Petroleum (BP) Lord John Browne in Beijing.
Prof. Lu spoke highly of the cooperation between CAS and BP since 2001 when a collaborative agreement between the two sides was signed, saying it was by far one of the biggest programs between the Academy and a foreign enterprise. He noticed that the project-based collaboration had seen steady growth and fruitful results on clean energy studies for the past six years, and aroused high attention from both the Chinese and British governments. CAS has always attached great importance to developing strategic partnership with BP, he added.
Prof. Lu then gave a brief introduction to the status quo of China's energy consumption to the British guests. As the second largest energy consumer around the globe, China uses coal for 70% of its energy sources, and over four fifths of the electric power was generated by coal-burning. Therefore, clean energy technologies, in particular clean coal technology, are crucial for the sustainable development of China's economy. Prof. Lu expressed hopes in addressing the country's and even the world's energy problems through effective international cooperation participated in by CAS.
The President also congratulated Dr. Martin Atkins, a BP employee working at the CAS Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) as a liaison officer, on his receiving the 2006 International S&T Cooperation Award from the Chinese Government, the highest prize of its kind across China.
Lord Browne said that BP also puts great emphasis on all kinds of strategic collaborations between CAS and the Group, such as the BP-China Research Center at DICP co-established by the beginning of 2002. He attributed the achieved success to the support from both governments and a bright future of the market, and looked forward to a long-term partnership with China based on mutual-trust and mutual-benefit.
Both parties expressed confidence in making perfect complementary partners between CAS, the leader of China's S&T development and innovation, and BP Group, the world's second largest energy enterprise with abundant expertise in technology development and its commercialized promotion, project construction and management as well as the administration of intellectual property rights. Further cooperation is going to enhance the industrialization of China's energy technologies, find new growing points in clean energy research, and hopefully contribute to the nation's economic development and environmental protection. With a team spirit of sincerity, openness, transparency, mutual-benefit and mutual-understanding with eyes on the future, the two parties will focus on clean energy technologies to boost China's energy efficiency, reduce pollution, promote the sustainable development, cut costs and address the world climate change.
Also present at the meeting were CAS VPs JIANG Mianheng and LI Jinghai, CAS Vice Secretary-General GUO Huadong as well as the director of the CAS Bureau of High-tech Researches and Development YIN Hejun. The British party included BP Chief Executive Designate Tony Hayward, its Executive Director Iain Conn and President of BP China Dr. Gary Dirks.
