Recently, at the 51st International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva held in Switzerland, the teams from Tsinghua University’s Institute for Carbon Neutrality achieved outstanding results, winning four gold medals along with the "Global Innovation Institution OFEED Special Award" and the "Saudi Delegation Commendation Award," shining as a highlight of Chinese zero-carbon technological innovation at this year's exhibition.

The project titled "Four-Flow Integrated Zero-Carbon Park Energy-Carbon Intelligent Management System," developed by the teams of Academician He Kebin and Professor Lu Xi from the Institute for Carbon Neutrality, in collaboration with Dongfang Electric Corporation and Mitacarbon (Hangzhou) Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., won a gold medal and the prestigious "Global Innovation Institution OFEED Special Award." Focusing on zero-carbon park construction as a key lever for achieving carbon neutrality goals, this project innovatively proposes the integration of "energy flow, carbon flow, material flow, and information flow." With information flow as the central hub, it breaks through four key technologies: accurate forecasting of wind and solar power, multi-energy flow simulation, intelligent dispatching, and precise carbon accounting. By breaking down data silos and management barriers, the team has built a smart management solution covering the entire process of zero-carbon parks. The project team has been granted 10 patents and 15 software copyrights, published over 120 high-level papers in leading international journals, and deployed relevant technologies in more than 10 zero-carbon parks in China and abroad. With its outstanding technological advancement, engineering practicality, and global adaptability, it provides a replicable and scalable Chinese solution for the zero-carbon transformation of industrial parks in countries at different development stages.

Academician He Kebin and Professor Lu Xi's team receiving the "Global Innovation Institution OFEED Special Award"

Chinese Ambassador to Switzerland listening to a presentation on the "Four-Flow Integrated Zero-Carbon Park Energy-Carbon Intelligent Management System"

The project "Mobile Biomass Low-Temperature Fast Carbonization Technology and Equipment (MobileCHAR)," developed by the teams of Professor Zhang Yanguo and Associate Professor Zhou Hui from the Institute for Carbon Neutrality's Low-Carbon Energy and CCUS Research Center and the Department of Energy and Power Engineering, won a gold medal and the "Saudi Delegation Commendation Award." Addressing the challenges of decentralized agricultural and forestry biomass resources, high collection, storage, and transportation costs, and low utilization efficiency, this project proposes an innovative "mobile in-situ conversion" technical pathway. Leveraging proprietary low-temperature fast carbonization, skid-mounted modular integration, and intelligent process control technologies, the team has developed mobile carbonization equipment integrating carbonization reaction, energy recovery, and intelligent regulation. Complementing large-scale carbonization systems, this technology forms a complete system covering distributed processing and large-scale application, achieving efficient and stable conversion of biomass into high-quality biochar. The resulting "char-gas-heat" poly-generation synergistic model shows promising application prospects in clean energy supply, industrial carbon reduction, and solid waste resource utilization, offering an innovative demonstration for global biomass valorization and low-carbon energy transition.

Associate Professor Zhou Hui at the exhibition

Two additional projects from the Institute for Carbon Neutrality won gold medals: "Key Technologies and Platform for Energy Market Operation with Grid-Scale Energy Storage" and "AI-Driven Transactive Coordination and Optimization for Power Grid," developed by the New Power System Research Center and the Department of Electrical Engineering. The first project addresses challenges in electricity market operation under high penetration of renewable energy by building an intelligent platform. It has been deployed in real-world scenarios such as the Southern China regional power market, reducing clearing time from about 30 minutes to 13–15 minutes, enabling annual renewable energy integration of 1,180 GWh, and cutting CO₂ emissions by 13.5 million tons.

In the context of carbon neutrality, the massive integration of variable renewable energy has made traditional grid dispatch models unsustainable, with the core challenge being the grid's rigid response to dynamic changes. To solve this, the second project developed an AI-driven intelligent decision-making platform. Using graph neural networks and transfer learning, it achieves real-time topology adaptation, enabling new operating modes to be configured within seconds. The technology has been successfully applied in practice, improving topology adaptability by 11.30% and reducing online decision-making time to under 50 seconds.

"Key Technologies and Platform for Energy Market Operation with Grid-Scale Energy Storage" winning a gold medal

"AI-Driven Transactive Coordination and Optimization for Power Grid" winning a gold medal

The Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions is co-organized by the Swiss Federal Government, the Canton of Geneva, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It is one of the longest-running, largest, and most influential invention exhibitions in the world, known for the professionalism and authority of its awards.

The gold medals and special awards won by the Tsinghua University Institute for Carbon Neutrality team at the Geneva exhibition represent strong international recognition of China's green and low-carbon technological innovation capabilities. They also mark a significant achievement of the "Carbon Neutrality and Energy System Transformation" (CNEST) multilateral collaboration program in technology development and outcome commercialization. The Tsinghua team stated that it will continue to leverage the CNEST program platform, iterating on its technology systems, expanding application scenarios, and deepening technical exchanges and industrial collaboration with countries worldwide, empowering global energy transition through technological innovation and helping nations jointly achieve carbon neutrality goals.