Recently, Tsinghua University and Paulson Institute have jointly announced the official start of the 5th “Paulson Prize for Sustainable Cities” in Beijing. “Paulson Prize for Sustainable Cities” was established in 2013, aiming at exploring more unique, innovative, and promotion-friendly solutions to cope with the challenges in the sustainable development of China.
“I declare that the 5th Paulson Prize for Sustainable Cities officially begins! Our goal is to honor the advanced solutions that can be promoted in China and around the world to cope with the challenges in sustainable development and to therefore encourage people to develop more innovative solutions.
- Henry Paulson, Chairman of the Paulson Institute”
Focus of the Prize
This prize will focus on three major fields including urban environment, circular economy and natural capital; and extensively collect sustainable development projects that have been implemented in China and have large-scale commercial promotion value as well as double benefit in economic and environmental fields. Enterprises, local governments, non-governmental organizations and other relevant institutions can all register to participate in the selection.
Urban Environment projects can actively improve urban environment, enhance urban climate toughness, and improve the quality of urban residents' life. They include but are not limited to the solutions like industrial / port energy saving and emission reduction, green building and building energy saving, intelligent transportation and new energy vehicles, power systems and renewable energy and other fields with the aim of coping with climate change and protecting ecological environment in promoting the development of urbanization.
Circular Economy projects can promote the “resource-product-consumption-renewable resource” material closed-loop flow, achieve efficient consumptions and recycling of resources, and take “reduction, reuse, resource-based” as principles to achieve the goal of making the best use of everything. They include but are not limited to recycling of industrial waste water, waste gas, and solid waste as well as recycling of renewable resources like scrap metal and waste electronic products, comprehensive utilization of crop straw, resource utilization of livestock and poultry breeding waste, agricultural recycling economy demonstration projects, household garbage recycling and other fields.
Natural Capital projects actively protect and enhance the value of the natural ecological environment (landscape, river, farmland, forest, lake, and biological diversity, etc.) in the process of urbanization, including but not limited to using market mechanisms to promote ecological compensation for natural resources, conservation of biodiversity, combating desertification and rocky desertification, soil remediation, water management and other fields.
Other types of projects that contribute to coordinated development between economy and environment such as promoting urban and rural integration, green agriculture, rural energy transformation, and protection of traditional culture, etc.
Assessments
This prize is evaluated and selected by an independent expert review committee composed of seven Chinese and American experts who are well-known in the fields of economics, finance, energy and ecology. Assessments will adhere to the criteria to evaluate the projects from five scoring dimensions including energy conservation and emission reduction, innovation, marketization degree, feasibility of promotion, and social benefits, conduct field investigation, and finally select winning projects.
Time and Approach of Application
Application Date: September 28, 2017 to November 20, 2017
Access to: www.paulsoninstitute.org.cn/prize
For more details and application form download
prize@paulsoninstitute.org
