University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) announced on January 10, 2019 to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on co-constructing The Energy Policy Research Center with the University of Chicago. It will form a new research collaboration between Chinese researchers and faculty from the University of Chicago focused on energy and environmental issues and policies in China and the world.
UCAS President Li Shushen said,“We are excited to form this historic partnership and to pursue this important work. Our relationship combines the outstanding engineering expertise of UCAS with the University of Chicago’s global leadership in economic analysis. Working together, I believe we will create new ideas and solutions that might not be produced otherwise. It is truly inspiring. ”
The University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer indicated, “We believe this historic and exciting cooperation between UCAS and the University of Chicago has great potential to advance significant information and relative applications in the foreseeable future. And I am very confident that we will promote some of the world’s most critical issues that neither of us could make individually. ”
The five-year collaboration aims to make new insights into making advance on energy and environmental challenges, offering Chinese policymakers new tools to deal with important priorities to facilitate the development of green energy economies. “ Energy and environmental issues are more than just technical issues, but they are also dramatically influenced by policies and legislation in many cases,” Su Gang, Vice President of UCAS, said in the signing ceremony, “Therefore, our collaboration is meaningful and I definitely believe that we will identify efficient solutions to these energy challenges that can help policymakers in China and other parts of the world.”
UCAS Senior Adviser Shih Choon Fong, who has ever been the president of the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the founder president of King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST), serves as the co-director of this cooperative center with professor Michael Greenstone, who is the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and the director of The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), also the former chief economist of the US Presidential Advisory Council.
Directed by Professor Michael Greenstone and his R&D group, UCAS and the University of Chicago also host the Mandarin launch of EPIC’ s Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) . As an unprecedented tool that allows policymakers to quantify the efficiency of air pollution reduction to the most significant index: improvements in life expectancy, which aims to reveal the true cost of air pollution around the world and establish relationship between Energy & Environmental policies and life expectancy.
Translation: CHEN Meiqi, JIN Zhaorui
