Summer Schools & Courses

Setting off for the mountains and sea, never forgetting passion

The 5th CEADs Summer Camp has come to a close!

2023 CEADs · Hangzhou

On August 5, 2023, the 5th CEADs Summer Camp drew to a perfect close on Xianghu Academy Island in Hangzhou, Zhejiang.

From July 26 to August 5, the 5th CEADs Summer Camp of the Carbon Emission Accounts and Datasets (CEADs) was successfully held on Xianghu Academy Island in Hangzhou, China. The ten-day camp was jointly organized by the China 21st Century Agenda Management Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Zhejiang Association for Science and Technology, and the Institute for Carbon Neutrality at Tsinghua University. It was jointly hosted by the CEADs team from the Department of Earth System Science at Tsinghua University and the Xianghu High-Tech Application Research Institute. In addition, the Beijing Office of the Zhejiang Provincial Government, the Institute for Global Change Studies at Tsinghua University, University College London, the University of Birmingham, the Hangzhou Association for Science and Technology, and Alibaba Cloud also co-hosted the camp.

The camp brought together more than 120 master’s and doctoral students from over 100 universities and colleges in China and abroad, including Cambridge University, the University of Pennsylvania, Tsinghua University, Peking University, and Zhejiang University. Focusing on the development and application of carbon accounting in developing countries around the world, the camp aimed to provide participants with systematic guidance on carbon accounting, peak carbon, and carbon neutrality through a complete training curriculum, and to cultivate versatile young talent with strong professional knowledge and practical skills in dual-carbon research.

On the morning of August 5, the camp concluded successfully. Academician Guo Dabo of the Academy of Social Sciences in the UK, Chair Professor of Basic Science at Tsinghua University, and Professor Liang Xi, Associate Dean of the School of Sustainable Construction at University College London, jointly presented the awards for Best Team and Best Individual at the 5th CEADs Summer Camp.

01 / Team presentations

At the closing ceremony, sixteen teams made up of campers from different universities and research backgrounds competed through roadshow presentations based on the research results they had achieved over the previous ten days. Their presentations covered six major themes: city-level carbon accounting, emerging-economy carbon accounting, input-output analysis, corporate carbon accounting, and point-source carbon accounting.

Team presentation highlights

01 / Team Copenhagen Handsome Guys

Team Copenhagen Handsome Guys used the Tapio decoupling elasticity method to study the impact of COVID-19 on carbon emissions and economic development at the urban scale in China, and applied the STIRPAT model to test the drivers behind decoupling across different cities.

02 / People in Charge Team

People in Charge Team analyzed the drivers of carbon emissions in southern and southwestern China. Using Kaya decomposition, they broke down per capita carbon emissions in key cities into three components: economy, energy consumption, and energy carbon intensity. A Sankey diagram showed that raw coal was the main energy source across all sectors in China, and that carbon emissions from the secondary industry were significantly higher than those of other sectors.

03 / Climate Change Task Force

Focusing on urban agglomerations in East China, Climate Change Task Force described the spatial and temporal evolution of regional carbon emissions in terms of total emissions, emission intensity, and per capita emissions, and carried out a detailed study of peak timing and emission decomposition.

04 / Happy Angels Despite Life's Hurt

Happy Angels Despite Life's Hurt calculated carbon emissions for key cities in Northeast and Northwest China, analyzed the spatial and temporal evolution of emissions before and after the pandemic as well as the carbon-source structure, and further discussed carbon emission inequality and decoupling issues in those key cities.

05 / Team One

Team One compiled carbon emission inventories for 12 developing countries, including India, Algeria, Thailand, Venezuela, and Indonesia. The results differed from other inventories and institutions by less than 20%. The team analyzed production-based and consumption-based carbon emissions in these countries and found that for most of them, the difference followed a U-shaped pattern over time.

06 / Casual Team

Casual Team calculated carbon emissions for small Asian and African countries such as Nigeria, Mauritius, Ghana, Vietnam, and Brunei by collecting raw data from energy balance tables and national statistical yearbooks. They analyzed sectoral contributions and changes over time, and selected Vietnam and Brunei as case studies to conduct emission driver decomposition using the LMDI model.

07 / Carbon AI

Recognizing that developed countries are relatively mature while developing countries still face the growing challenge of energy use and carbon emissions driven by rapid economic growth, Carbon AI carried out CO2 accounting and LMDI driver decomposition for emerging economies in Latin America such as Brazil and Mexico. The group found that population adjustment, energy structure transition, and low-carbon industrial development could become key drivers for Latin America to achieve economic growth and coordinated emission reduction.

08 / Young Pioneers

With rapid economic growth and population increases, the number of power plants in Asia has surged over the past decade. Given that previous studies mostly focused on CO2 emissions from coal-fired power generation and paid less attention to the impact of plants using other fuels such as oil, natural gas, and biomass in smaller countries, Young Pioneers filled this gap by verifying latitude and longitude information on the basis of the CEADs database and improving the Asian power plant database. They then clarified the decarbonization challenge in the power sector. The study found that total installed capacity and operating time were the main influencing factors, and that emission reduction could be advanced from multiple angles, including promoting clean energy, improving energy efficiency, and facilitating economic restructuring.

09 / Barbie Group

Barbie Group cleaned and calculated the carbon emissions of more than 16,000 fuel- and gas-fired power plants in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, and then conducted spatial and temporal carbon emission analysis at the continental, national, and key-enterprise levels.

10 / Carbon Asset Restructuring

Carbon Asset Restructuring verified the latitude and longitude information of more than 14,000 power plant units across 28 European countries and analyzed their CO2 emissions. They showed the relationship between installed capacity, emission factors, and CO2 emissions for each country, and unpacked the emission sources.

11 / Carbon Brain Team

Carbon Brain Team collected and organized input-output data for countries in Oceania and North America for 2020-2021. Using the EMERGING model, the team calculated the embodied carbon emissions, embodied value added, and embodied carbon economic efficiency transferred from China’s exports to five trade blocs: NAFTA, the EU, RCEP, ASEAN, and the AU. They also carried out a comprehensive assessment from the perspectives of regional distribution, time trends, and major driving sectors, offering suggestions for optimizing the structure of China’s export trade.

12 / Primeval Forest

Primeval Forest collected and organized input-output data for countries in Europe and South America. On that basis, the team used the emerging model to embed provincial data from China into a global multi-regional input-output table, studied the global transfer patterns of embodied carbon emissions in China’s service sector, and analyzed the emission characteristics and driving factors from multiple perspectives, including internal service-sector structure and the consumption side.

13 / Glasgow vs. Godzilla

Glasgow vs. Godzilla examined carbon transfer relationships between five relatively developed African countries and the rest of the world, showing changes in consumption-based and production-based emissions across sectors in 2015 and 2019, and comparing emission projections from the CEADs and GCAM models.

14 / No Poland Team

No Poland Team completed an analysis of embodied carbon in traded goods across global regions in 2019. They found that the transfer of consumption carbon from developed countries to production carbon in developing countries was mainly reflected in upstream sectors such as electricity and natural gas. Based on the relationship between trade value and embodied carbon in trade, they conducted a trade fairness analysis and assessed global trade carbon-reduction efficiency through trade between developed and developing countries.

15 / Louvre Artifact Theft Team

Louvre Artifact Theft Team cleaned the carbon emission data of more than 46,000 investee enterprises across 120 countries and regions worldwide, drawn from the S&P Capital database for five developed countries and five emerging economies. On this basis, they further calculated the investment carbon footprints of 100 financial institutions across 44 sectors worldwide using EIO-LCA and HEM methods.

16 / Alibaba Mama Team

Alibaba Mama Team calculated product carbon footprints for 25 processes and 13 product categories across three key industries: steel, chemicals, and plastics, from cradle to gate. They established nearly 30 credible product carbon footprint models, produced nearly 30 product carbon footprint reports, and put forward feasible recommendations for emission reduction in the steel industry.

Roadshow scene

The review panel, made up of experts and students, asked questions and scored each team’s presentation.

02 / Awards

After the team presentations, two experts, the mentor group, and the 16 team leaders scored and selected the outstanding teams. The average score after removing the highest and lowest scores served as each team’s final score. Based on those scores, two outstanding teams were selected for the camp. Outstanding individuals were first nominated by each team, with one or two candidates recommended per team, and then one outstanding individual was elected by public vote. In line with the rule against duplicate awards, if the outstanding individual was already part of an outstanding team, the award moved to the next candidate.

Once all team scores had been tallied, the most anticipated award ceremony began. First, Professor Guo Dabo announced the runner-up for Best Team: No Poland Team! Teacher Liang Xi presented the certificate to the winning team.

Best Team Runner-up: No Poland Team

Professor Guo then announced the first-place Best Team: Young Pioneers! Teacher Chen Xiaolu presented the award certificate to Young Pioneers.

Best Team First Place: Young Pioneers

Finally, Professor Guo announced the outstanding individual: Wang Xinyao from Team Copenhagen Handsome Guys. Professor Guo presented the award certificate to Wang Xinyao.

It should be noted that according to the public voting statistics, Shui Bin from Young Pioneers and Xiao Yilong from No Poland Team also received nearly the same number of votes. However, following the no-duplicate-award rule, the outstanding individual award was passed on to Wang Xinyao.

Outstanding Individual: Wang Xinyao (right)

Congratulations again to all the winning students, and to all campers who successfully completed the program. Through mutual learning and joint discussion, everyone not only deepened their understanding of dual-carbon work, but also built lasting friendships. This summer camp laid a valuable foundation for interdisciplinary and cross-domain academic collaboration among young dual-carbon scholars, and provided an international, high-level exchange platform for cultivating a new generation of versatile dual-carbon talent and supporting the country’s 3060 dual-carbon goals. May every young dual-carbon scholar go far and achieve even greater success!

03 / Epilogue

/ Epilogue 1: Covered by multiple media outlets

We made it into the news!

/ Epilogue 2: Hear what everyone has to say

Campers / CEADAs team reflections

/ Bright prospects ahead

The road ahead is long and full of promise!

Peking University, Xiao Yilong:

During this CEADs summer camp, I gained a great deal of happiness. I still remember the anxiety of arriving in Hangzhou ten days earlier, the shyness of meeting my roommates and teammates for the first time, the excitement of traveling with friends, and the joy of learning, discussing, and doing research together. Over these ten days, I felt that doing something meaningful with a group of like-minded friends can really make people forget fatigue and even feel a deep sense of fulfillment. That fulfillment came from the knowledge I absorbed from lectures and group discussions by many outstanding scholars, and from the friendship and encouragement we gained while working hard together. I was truly happy to meet everyone on the No Poland Team, and even more grateful to the CEADs team for giving us the chance to meet and know one another. I hope this summer camp can truly become our starting point and lead us to meet again in a brighter future.

East China Normal University, Zhang Ziwei:

We came together because of the same ideal and goal. Over the ten days, we explored a research field that was unfamiliar to us, used our individual strengths, worked closely together, and completed a full scientific project, which brought us a strong sense of achievement. Whether learning together in the lecture hall or debating data models, every moment we spent striving together is worth treasuring. From the perspective of both scientific collaboration and lasting friendship, what moved me most was the feeling that we are no longer passersby in each other’s lives.

Shandong University, Wang Wenqiang:

Particitating in the CEADs summer camp was a completely new academic experience for me. During the camp, not only were there many renowned scholars giving professional academic lectures, but dedicated mentors were also available throughout to answer questions. Team-based research creation and presenting the final results was a very meaningful part, allowing everyone to put what they learned into practice and grow quickly. In addition, I met many like-minded friends and enjoyed very relaxed and pleasant communication and learning with them. Finally, I was impressed by Teacher Guo’s team; they handled such a large-scale event with ease. Thanks for all their hard work.

Peking University, Men Yatai:

The Carbon Emission Accounts and Datasets project has carried out many interesting, innovative, and practically and policy relevant tasks. Data completeness and reliability are the important foundation for all subsequent research. The point-source research task my team received in this summer camp involved verifying and analyzing power plant point sources in Asia. During the research process, I mastered methods related to reverse geocoding, matching software development, and point-source carbon emission accounting, which broadened my thinking and laid an important foundation for future carbon emission work.

I met many like-minded classmates here, expanded my social circle, and exchanged ideas with many talented young people, learning a great deal. I was especially fortunate to meet everyone on the Young Pioneers team. In you, I saw the vitality of young people, the dedication and pursuit of researchers, and the ideals and national commitment of dual-carbon scholars. Although our time together was short, I benefited greatly and will never forget it.

Finally, I would like to thank the CEADs summer camp for providing such a valuable opportunity and platform, and thank Teacher Guo and all the staff for their hard work. I hope that in the future I can contribute to the country’s dual-carbon strategy, live up to the gains from this summer camp, and live up to my youth and ideals.

/ Epilogue 3: More great photos

Editor’s note

From the summit of high mountains, one can see the surging rivers; from above the peaks, one feels the full force of the wind. These ten short days brought all the young dual-carbon scholars tightly together. As we set out again, we stride toward a new journey and face the future with our heads high. The 3060 dual-carbon goal has already posed the question of our时代; our answer is now being written.