Shanghai Jiao Tong University

The partnership launched the joint initiative of the Low Carbon College, making a significant, sustainable and socially responsible contribution to the world.

Low Carbon College (LCC)

A joint initiative between the University of Edinburgh, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), and the Shanghai Lin-gang city in China. As the first domestic Low Carbon College, we aim to become a world-class innovative higher education and research institute with international influence, which provides graduate education, scientific research, executive training, and innovation and incubation.

Establishment on 18 May 2017, LLC is based in a custom-designed facility situated in the “smart city” of Lin-gang. The college is focused on research and education in low carbon energy, low carbon environment, carbon finance, carbon management and low carbon cities.

Drawing on expertise from the SJTU’s advanced research in energy, environment, finance and management, combined with the knowledge and experience from world-class universities such as the University of Edinburgh and University College London- LCC intends to promote the creation of a low-carbon society and contribute to the sustainable development of China and the world.

Our sustainable and socially responsible contribution

LCC provides an international centre for the exchange of ideas, development of talent, creation of partnerships and development of systemic solutions that tackle global environmental challenges.

Students, academic and industry/business experts from China, the UK and around the world come together here, developing projects, courses and partnerships which focus on key challenges such as low carbon energy, air quality and ecosystem restoration, environmental governance, sustainable resource management, low carbon finance and the transition to a low carbon economy.

Activities taking place within the partnership

Dual taught postgraduate programmes

In terms of training, our dual taught postgraduate programmes, launched in 2018 have won the Scotland-China Business Council Award for Innovation in Education in 2019.

The masters in Low Carbon Energy and Low Carbon Environment attract 70 students per annum and prior to Covid-19, 10-15% took up the option of a year in Edinburgh on Masters programmes including Energy, Society and Sustainability, Carbon Finance, and Carbon Management. To date, 170 students have graduated (resulting in 100% employment) and several graduates have received personal awards, including membership of 100 Future Energy Leaders (FEL-100). During the pandemic, LCC additionally hosted 62 UoE-registered MSc students from the Schools of Engineering and Informatics, who were unable to travel to Edinburgh.

Joint summer school

We also jointly deliver an annual summer school, Green for Life, which is available to our own undergraduate students as an international experiential learning opportunity as well as recent graduates from around the world who intend to apply for our taught MSc programmes.

Early career researchers at UoE have been able to enhance their international teaching profile by developing and delivering (in person and virtually) highly novel courses, e.g. sustainable cities: the urban environment as a vehicle for discussing low carbon transitions; geoenergy and hydrogen storage potential.

These exemplar activities led to our partnership winning the 2022 British Business Council/British Chamber of Commerce Education Partnership Award.

Now that travel to and from China is again possible, and mindful of our diversification strategy, we aim to achieve sustainable entry numbers of 10-20 across our suite of UoE programmes that are available to LCC students through our dual Masters scheme (value £330-660K per annum).

Joint seed funding

In terms of research co-creation, joint seed funding in 2017 initiated collaborations which led to sustained joint research with multiple signature peer-reviewed journal publications across engineering-, business-, environmental and health-related low carbon research areas.

Topics include: green cities and human health impacts; country level carbon storage; carbon emission trading markets and legal frameworks; modelling of CO2 sequestration methods, exergy analysis of post-combustion carbon capture, offshore wind energy.

This also resulted in successful follow-on funding applications including those to the Newton Fund-British Council-National Science Foundation, Chinese Department for Climate Change (Ministry of Ecology and Environment), National Key Research Development Programme of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Thousand Talents Programme, the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Research Councils UK.

Future of our partnership

A second seed fund call which launched in March 2023, is developing further partnership, creating a cohort of PhD students, supporting and mentoring by academics from each University to address the research barriers to the development of energy- and resource-sustainable cities.

Edinburgh aims to nurture our talent, provide crucial training and appreciation of the landscape, challenges and opportunities provided by China-UK research partnerships (we are including training on export control and information security) and generate the future leadership skills and connections required for development in an area of crucial worldwide importance.

This venture is a key to developing the track record of signature joint LCC research and training programmes, infrastructure and outputs required for a potential Chinese Ministry of Education (MoE) Joint International Research Laboratory application in 2024.