On the morning of July 5th, 2013, Prof. Noam Lior from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania, visited IET at invitation. He gave an academic report titled"A brief introductionto scientific sustainability analysis". The lecture was chaired by the Deputy Director Zhu Junqiang, with more than 100 researchers and graduate students attending.
At the beginning, Prof. Zhu Junqiang gave a brief introduction of Prof. NoamLior, who is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronauticsand serves as editor or member of editorial board for several internationaljournals. In the field of energy utilization,solar thermal power generation, heat transfer, combustion,seawater desalinationand water treatment, sustainable development, Prof. Noam Lior has made many great achievements and contributions. He has publishedmore than 300 papers andedited manyacademic monographs, enjoying greatreputation and influence in the international energy sector.
In the report, Prof. Lior talked about the problem of irreversible damage that the environment and the long-term viability may be suffered if excessive emissions of non-renewable energy consumptionand crazy growth of pollutant continues. In this case, a new development patternwill be expected and the concept of sustainable development emerges as the times require. Various interrelated factors affected spatial-temporal boundary conditions and all advatages and disadvantage. The model of sustainable development includes three pillarissues, environment, economy and society, each of which complements each other and plays indispensable role.
Prof. Lior also pointed out many problems of sustainable development, the most prominent of which include the following three aspects: firstly, lack of clear definition of the three pillarissuesand applicable range ofevaluation index; secondly, how to determine the evaluation index of relative weight; thirdly, difficulty in effectively solving the problem of standardization of comprehensivesustainable development index used for evaluation andcomparison of sustainability.Then Prof. Lior introduced the research policy and status of sustainable development in the United States and the EU countries, talked about the details of Denmark, Dubai and other countries in exploring sustainable development and evaluation index,which is of great realistic significanceto developing countries. After the report, the students present had a deep discussion with Prof. Noam Lior on the topic of sustainable development and the utilization of new energy.
At the lecture, Prof. Lior was hired as a visiting professor of IET and Deputy Director Zhu Junqiang issued the letter of appointment. Prof. Lior used to charge the Chinese energy sustainable development issue of the Journal of International Energy and has made a special trip to western China (Xinjiang, Tibet) to investigate the development of renewable energy. He also served as the Chairman of theinstitute ofscience in committee of the international energy conference sponsored by the Chinese Society of Engineering Thermo-physics. He has establisheda long-term cooperation with the laboratory of distributed energy supply and renewable energy.
