Vienna, Tianjin 7 March 2025 – One week before its APEC Economic Leaders Meeting in Peru in November 2024, APEC organised the ‘10th Asia-Pacific Energy Sustainable Development Forum’ hosted by the APEC Sustainable Energy Center from 5 – 8 November 2024 in Tianjin, PR China. The forum focused on ´Sustainable Energy and Green New Quality Productivity´. Over 300 experts from official delegations of 15 APEC economies as well as representatives from the United Nations, World Economic Forum, from research institutions, enterprises and local governments participated. Established in 1989 the 21 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) members include China, the United States and Russia. As of 2023 around 37% of the world’s population lived in the APEC region and it produced 61% of global GDP (USD 64.4 Trillion).

Based on its international footprint in innovation, green technologies, digitalisation and urbanisation CDA was invited to contribute to the ‘8th APEC Workshop on Sustainable Cities’ focused on ´Urban Energy Security in the context of Carbon Neutrality´ taking place on 7 November 2024 in Tianjin. At this occasion CDA President Alexander G. Welzl gave remarks on ‘Urban Mining as a Building Block for the Low-carbon Energy Transition – Inputs for a China-US-EU Circular Economy Joint Approach’. In his speech he drew on the convergence of circular economy and digitalisation in cities. European city planners, public procurement departments and architects have started to implement Building Information Modelling (BIM) as a means to make urban built environments sustainable. In this process of urban mining the extraction of secondary raw materials from durable goods and deposits can be integrally planned and managed. To this end, BIM and digital twins of houses can be used to visualize and control the use and recycling of raw materials in cities´ infrastructures helping municipial authorities create new jobs and save billions of public money every year.