Kina - Energy Conservation in Buildings - Chinese/Norwegian Cooperation

NTNU has established "Energy and Petroleum/Resources and Environment" as a principal strategic multidisciplinary R&D activity (see Project Description Attachment). International cooperation is a major part of this effort, with main focus on Japan, USA an d China. NTNU's university rector and a large group of professors and other experts recently visited Tsinghua University in Beijing and Jiao Tong university in Shanghai in order to establish contacts for further cooperation with China. The Norwegian Resea rch Council (NRC) participated in this visit to China. Energy use in buildings, under the accronym SmartBuild, is a major focus area under this NTNU-strategy, this is also the name of a strategic KMB programme with the major funding from NRC. At Tsinghua University contacts were etsablished with a group that in many repects mirrors the participants in SmartBuild. The fields covered are both building-related and energy supply and equipment related, which means that many academic units at NTNU may particip ate in joint projects with Tsinghua, which is rated as the best technological university in China. In order to establish necessary cointacts for separate projects of cooperation, it is planned to arrange joint workshops at Tsinghua and at NTNU for profes sors and other ecperts within the most relevant fields: energy-efficient architecture, building envelope design, building energy services, building integrated energy services, localised energy systems for building energy supply etc. The outcome of the wor kshops will be groups of project partners from the two universitities, that independantly will pursue national and EU funding for separate projects.