Funding schemes advance energy research collaboration with the University of Sydney

Prof. Tihomir Ancev (1st right), School of Economics visits Prof. XU Yuan (1st left) at CUHK under the Internationalisation Faculty Mobility Scheme.

CUHK and the University of Sydney (USyd) have been close partners since 2006. A number of funding schemes are in place to facilitate and support joint initiatives between the two universities, which have resulted in the development of multi-disciplinary cutting-edge research. One of the awardees, Prof. XU Yuan from the Department of Geography and Resource Management, shared how the schemes have benefitted his research collaboration with USyd on energy transition and climate mitigation.

‘Prof. Tihomir Ancev at USyd and I first kick-started exchange visits under the CUHK Internationalisation Faculty Mobility Scheme in 2016. The visits have facilitated our discussion and led us to apply for the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN)’s Research Development Fund in 2017.’ A global research alliance on the project ‘Wind or Solar? The Political Economy of Fuel Competition between Renewables’ was formed, which resulted in a workshop on political economy of energy transition and a special issue in Energy Policy.

Encouraged by the promising results, the team is determined to deepen the collaboration. ‘We were lucky to have received the USyd-CUHK Partnership Collaboration Awards to continue our partnership. We hosted two workshops at CUHK and USyd last year that engaged potential collaborators.’

The planning of a workshop on carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS) supported by the CUHK Research Summit Series is underway. Prof. Xu is looking forward to driving the CCUS research through international collaboration on various perspectives of technology, economics and politics.

As part of the University’s internationalisation effort, a range of schemes are administered by the Office of Academic Links (OAL) to help faculty members build and strengthen their research collaboration with a view to raising the University’s international standing and advancing the frontiers of research. Please explore these opportunities on OAL’s webpage.

The WUN workshop brings an international and inter-disciplinary group of researchers together to discuss renewable energy development.