BP and Chinese Academy of Sciences held a ceremony in Shanghai to celebrate the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, announcing their intent to establish the Clean Energy Commercialization Centre.

Jiang Mianheng, vice president of CAS, said at the signing ceremony, "China, today, represents the world's second largest energy consumer, and coal accounts for more than 70% of China's total energy consumption. Therefore, cleaner use of energy resources, coal in particular, is critical for the sustainable development of the Chinese economy. Building upon CAS's expertise and advantaged resources in natural science research, and BP's experience and its international best practices in technology commercialization and project management, this new partnership will bring breakthroughs in the development of conversion and commercialization, which will generate materially significant clean energy investment opportunities, contributing to the development of China's energy industry, its economic growth and environment."

CECC aims to accelerate the development in China of clean coal conversion technologies and the creation of associated value chain investment opportunities through the commercialization of key technologies and coordinated management of large scale demonstration projects which primarily use coal as feedstock for fuel production, chemicals manufacturing and power generation.

According to the MoU, CAS and BP will join their efforts to make CECC a successful and profitable world class platform which will identify, evaluate, select, develop and commercialize strategic cleaner coal conversion technologies. It will also integrate and consolidate individual technologies from CAS institutes and other Chinese research and development organizations and elsewhere to contribute to China's clean energy development and energy security.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Iain Conn, BP managing director and chief executive, Refining and Marketing said, "Given the increasingly important role China plays in the global economy, China's choice and efforts in promoting new and cleaner energy applications will have a profound impact on both the future of the Chinese economy and the global energy market. I believe the establishment of CECC will play a significant role in facilitating indigenous Chinese innovation capability to meet the environmental and energy challenges faced today by China and the world".

The partnership relations between BP and CAS can be traced back to November 2001, when the two parties jointly launched the "Clean Energy, Facing the Future" program, a 10-year, US$10 million research initiative.