In the afternoon of April 27, Dr. Reinhold Achatz, Global Vice President of Siemens AG, and Advisory Professor of Tsinghua University, visited Tsinghua where he delivered an inspiring speech at the Tsinghua Forum, entitled “Green Revolution: The innovative response to challenges of climate change".
Firstly, Dr. Achatz briefly introduced the development of Siemens. With a history of 160 years, Siemens is one of the world’s largest electronics and electrical engineering companies, and has major businesses in the industrial, energy and healthcare sectors. Innovation has always been one of important elements in the company’s business strategy. Siemens strives continually to involve new elements and concepts in its products, and as a result has achieved great success within its business areas.
Dr. Achatz also mentioned the challenges of globalization, urbanization, population aging, and climate change in his speech. He elaborated the linkage between climate change and natural disasters, and indicated that low-carbon technology is the key strategy to reduce greenhouse effects and to overcome climate change. Moreover he stressed that renewable energy and improvement of energy efficiency are effective ways to achieve such a low-carbon economy. In these areas, Siemens has already made significant efforts in the developments of wind, geothermal, water, and dessert area energy. The company also seeks to reduce energy losses and to improve energy efficiency in energy production, transportation, and storage. For example, Siemens has adapted a variety of strategies to meet the different needs for long term and short term energy storage. Dr. Achatz also talked about developments in urban planning and new-energy vehicles, stressing that the concept of energy reduction should be introduced into urban transportation, roads, lighting and other urban infrastructure construction. He commented that in the future automobiles should be of a simple style design and of low cost, with the support of innovative information and communication systems.
The Tsinghua Forum event was organized by the Tsinghua Academic Committee, and is one of the 100 Academic Activities in honor of Tsinghua’s Centenary..
