On the morning of September 16, Dr. Pavel Korolev, Vice-President of the Global Energy Association (GEA) with other two experts visited CUP to discuss the cooperation on the matter of the 2020 Global Energy Prize Summit undertaking by CUP, and signed the Partnership and Cooperation Memorandum with CUP. President Zhang Laibin met with the delegation from GEA, and staff from the WEUN Secretariat and the International Office also attended this meeting.

At the meeting, President Zhang, on behalf of CUP, extended a warm welcome to Dr. Pavel Korolev and his delegation. After simply introducing some basic information of CUP, Zhang Laibin mainly introduced CUP’s working progress in the field of international cooperation and exchanges, especially on CUP 65th Anniversary, this university took the lead in establishing “Worldwide Energy University Network” (WEUN), uniting 28 world famous energy research universities and building cooperation platform to show its increasing international influence in the field of energy. Zhang hoped that the two sides could jointly initiate international cooperation in the field of energy, including holding international energy summit, academic forum, youth salon and student activities and at last he expressed the great honor to host the 2020 Global Energy Prize Summit in Beijing on behalf of CUP. Sun Xudong, Secretary-General of the WEUN Secretariat, introduced the founding purpose, missions and major achievements of the WEUN in the past year and introduced the preparations for the 2020 Global Energy Prize Summit.

Pavel Korolev expressed his great honor to visit CUP and his gratitude to President Zhang for his warm reception. He introduced GEA's organizational structure, operational model and the Global Energy Prize initiated by GEA. He emphasized that GEA and WEUN have great similarities, including the founding philosophy and missions. He believed that the two sides will have a cordial working relationship in the future. Finally, he expressed his great pleasure to see the 2020 Global Energy Prize Summit to be hosted by CUP and looked forward to full cooperation between the two sides to make this global event a great success.

Later, the two sides signed the Partnership and Cooperation Memorandum.

Prior to this meeting, Dr Pavel Korolev, Vice-President of GEA, and Sophia Morgan, Head of GEA International Cooperation Department, held a preparatory meeting for the 2020 Global Energy Prize Summit on September 12. Yao Jun, Deputy Secretary-General of WEUN Secretariat and relevant secretariat staff attended the meeting. Yao Jun, on behalf of CUP, reported the preparations for the 2020 Global Energy Prize Summit to GEA. And the two sides had a detailed and in-depth discussion on the specific matters of the summit, including the date of the summit, members of the organizing committee, conference reports, topics and composition of the branch summits, guest invitation, international and domestic media, guest reception, expert comments and venue layout. WEUN Secretariat had set up a working group to prepare for the summit, and made preliminary plans for the summit and branch forums. After the meeting, WEUN staff led GEA delegates to the site of the meeting to have an inspection of the hardware facilities of the main meeting and sub-meetings, the accommodation and catering arrangements of the delegates during the meeting, and the surrounding environment of the meeting site. The GEA Delegation highly praised the careful preparations made by CUP and WEUN, and they expressed the satisfaction of the meeting site and the confidence on the successful hosting of 2020 Global Energy Prize Summit by CUP.

The Global Energy Association (GEA), founded in 2002, is a non-profit organization dedicated to the international research and projects development in the global energy field. Its purpose is to promote and support research and innovation in energy, and to promote the development of global energy cooperation. Since its establishment, it has been supported by PJSC Gazprom, "Surgutneftegas" PJSC and PJSC FGC UES, three famous companies in the Russian energy field. GEA is mainly responsible for managing and coordinating and ultimately awarding the global energy awards, and implementing several other projects. The Global Energy Prize, initiated in 2002, annually honors outstanding achievements in energy research and technology from around the world that are helping address the world's various and pressing energy challenges. The honorees are awarded the Global Energy Prize by the President of the Russian Federation along with a prize of RUB 39 million. For more information about GEA, please visit http://www.globalenergyprize.org.