In the open­ing plen­ary, the speak­ers will share their views on the cur­rent status of cli­mate pro­tec­tion world­wide.  You can hear about the core find­ings of the up­com­ing IP­CC re­port, why "we have to act now", and why the Pass­ive House stand­ard plays a crit­ic­al role in achiev­ing our cli­mate goals. After that, par­ti­cipants can take part in the 20 in­form­at­ive lec­ture ses­sions of the 23rd In­ter­na­tion­al Pass­ive House Con­fer­en­ce in Gaobeidi­an, China.

Ernst Ul­rich von Weiz­säck­er is one of the pi­on­eers of sus­tain­able busi­ness prac­tices. Von Weiz­säck­er has been a mem­ber of the Club of Rome, an in­ter­dis­cip­lin­ary al­li­ance of sci­ent­ists for the great­er good of hu­man­ity, since 1992. To en­sure that hu­man­ity's fu­ture can be sus­tained, this or­gan­isa­tion stud­ies the mega­trends in hu­man­ity's his­tory. Cel­eb­rat­ing its 50th an­niversary in 2018, the Club of Rome pub­lished a new re­port titled  "Come on! ". In his lec­ture at the Pass­ive House Con­fer­en­ce, von Weiz­säck­er will dis­cuss, among oth­er things, the solu­tions to the glob­al eco­lo­gic­al and so­cial crisis. He will also talk about the con­tent of the re­port in which he, to­geth­er with co-au­thor An­ders Wijk­man, made clear: "We can no longer de­pend on a so­ci­et­al mod­el that was de­ve­loped for a world of few­er than one bil­li­on people. "

Hou Li'an, born in Xuzhou, Ji­angsu Province, is an En­vir­on­ment­al En­gin­eer­ing Spe­cial­ist. In 2009, he was hon­oured as an Aca­dem­i­cian of Chinese Academy of En­gin­eer­ing. He is renowned for the de­vel­op­ment of ad­vanced tech­niques in his work against air pol­lu­tion in China. Hou Li'an has long ded­ic­ated him­self to sci­en­tif­ic re­search, en­gin­eer­ing design and tech­nic­al man­age­ment work in the field of en­vir­on­ment­al con­struc­tion. His lec­ture will deal with "In­door air qual­ity con­trol for a healthy China".

Di­ana Ürge-Vor­satz has been a pro­fess­or at the Cent­ral European Uni­versity and dir­ect­or of the Cen­ter for Cli­mate Change and Sus­tain­able En­ergy Policy since 2007. Her work centres on the re­duc­tion of car­bon emis­sions from build­ings and cit­ies and its im­port­ance in the con­text of cli­mate change. She is one of the main con­trib­ut­ors to the IP­CC Spe­cial Re­port - Glob­al Warm­ing of 1,5°C (2018). The re­port pre­dicts an in­crease in num­ber and in­tens­ity of heat waves, draughts and ex­treme rain­falls in the fol­low­ing dec­ades due to glob­al warm­ing if the glob­al tem­per­at­ure rises over 1,5 °C. In Gaobeidi­an, she will ex­pand on parts of the re­port and provide in­sights in­to the new­est find­ings in her re­search.

Wolfgang Feist, a phys­i­cist by train­ing, is the founder of the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te. He has ded­ic­ated his ca­reer to the de­vel­op­ment of solu­tions for en­ergy ef­fi­cient build­ings and in­creas­ing in­dustry ca­pa­city world­wide through the Pass­ive House Stand­ard. In his speech, he will point out why en­ergy ef­fi­ciency is key to the suc­cess of the en­ergy trans­form­a­tion in a com­pletely sus­tain­able eco­nomy. He will fur­ther ex­plore how the Pass­ive House stand­ard is provid­ing com­fort­able liv­ing space for every­one on the plan­et, re­gard­less of where they are loc­ated, by us­ing the re­new­able en­ergy avail­able in the re­gion.

Have an­oth­er look at the con­fer­en­ce's pro­gramme You can ex­pect in­ter­est­ing lec­tures, ex­cit­ing ex­cur­sions, hands-on work­shops, and, as al­ways, an in­form­at­ive trade ex­hib­i­tion.

We are already look­ing for­ward to see­ing you in Gaobeidi­an!