The International Conference on Defining the Road to Zero Carbon Prosperity will take place on 26–28 October 2026 at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), China.
Building on the April 2026 conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia, it will explore how the transition can support economic prosperity, industrial transformation, and social wellbeing.
Zero Carbon Prosperity looks beyond replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy to consider how societies can build wellbeing without fossil fuels.
Kejun Jiang is Professor and Head of the Carbon Neutrality and Climate Change Thrust at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou). His research covers energy transition, integrated assessment modeling, policy assessment, climate change mitigation, emissions scenarios and sustainable development pathways.
He has worked on energy policy analysis at China’s Energy Research Institute since 1990 and began developing integrated assessment models for energy and greenhouse-gas emissions scenarios in 1994. He leads the Integrated Policy Assessment for China (IPAC) modeling team. Since 1997, he has contributed to multiple reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and to United Nations Environment Programme global environmental assessments. He earned a doctorate in social engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1999.
His recent research includes long-term energy and emissions scenarios, air-pollution control pathways, and the assessment of energy and carbon taxes.
Jiahua Pan is a Visiting Professor in the Carbon Neutrality and Climate Change Thrust at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) and Executive Director of CGCS. His research spans sustainable urbanization, zero-carbon industrial parks and cities, energy and climate policy, global climate institutions, and ecological economics.
He previously directed the Institute of Eco-civilization Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and served as Vice Chair of China’s National Expert Committee on Climate Change. He was a member of the independent group of scientists appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General to prepare the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report, and has contributed to IPCC Working Group III. Earlier roles included the United Nations Development Programme’s Beijing office. He earned a PhD in environmental economics from the University of Cambridge in 1993.
His faculty profile highlights recognition including the Sun Yefang Economic Science Award and the China Environment Award.
Ye Qi is Dean of the Society Hub and a Chair Professor at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou). His affiliations include the Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Public Policy Thrust and the Carbon Neutrality and Climate Change Thrust. His research focuses on climate change and environmental policy and governance, and on sustainability science and its applications.
Before joining HKUST(GZ), he held professorships at Tsinghua University and served as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy from 2014 to 2019. Earlier appointments included the University of California, Berkeley, Cornell University and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He earned a PhD in environmental science from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and Syracuse University in 1994.
He has led annual research on China’s low-carbon development. Projects listed in his faculty profile include the Guangdong-Hong Kong Joint Laboratory for Carbon Neutrality Science and Technology, the Guangdong-Hong Kong Joint Laboratory for Water Security, and research on the institutional design of Hong Kong as a green finance center.
Jiaqi Lu is an Assistant Professor in the Carbon Neutrality and Climate Change Thrust at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) and Associate Director of CGCS. His work focuses on global energy transitions, energy and climate policy, international climate governance, comparative environmental politics, and energy-technology innovation.
Before joining HKUST(GZ), he was a senior researcher at Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center and a postdoctoral researcher at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He also held a predoctoral research position at Harvard Kennedy School and worked on energy and climate policy at the Brookings Institution. He earned a joint PhD in political science and environmental science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2023.
His research has appeared in Science, Nature Energy, Nature Geoscience, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Energy Policy and other journals.