Ecopark focuses on latest technology

The Qingdao Sino-German Ecopark, the only joint project between the Chinese and German governments, will strive to promote cutting-edge, environmentally friendly technology for the marine industries, its managers say.

The park, in the Qingdao West Coast New Area, will develop a number of ocean sectors, including marine biological businesses, maritime energy surveys and exploitation, monitoring of the marine environment, and desalination projects, according to Liu Wen, an official from the park's management committee.

"We have organized 34 promotional events in Europe to attract investment," Liu says. "But businesses that are unable to meet our environmental standards won't be invited."

Several German companies involved in the fields of marine biology and ocean technology have already started to build facilities in the park, she says.

The park is cooperating with Wolfgang Feist, co-originator of "passive housing" energy efficient, solar-powered buildings to run a trial of ultralow-energy structures and then industrialize them to help reduce the buildings' ecological footprints.

Construction of the park, which covers 11.6 square kilometers, began at the end of 2011 after the project was endorsed by then Chinese premier Wen Jiabao and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The construction of 13 commercial platforms, including a German Enterprise Promotion Plaza, is progressing well, according to the authorities.

To maintain harmonious ecological development in the park, the management committee used assessment systems produced by the German Sustainable Building Council to produce a comprehensive set of indexes to gauge the park's consumption of energy and resources, its reduction of pollution, and a number of other eco-friendly measures.

More than 7,600 residents of 15 villages who were relocated to make way for the park will be given new apartments featuring green and energy-saving technologies, according to Zong Bo, a management committee official, who says construction of the local infrastructure will be completed in 2015, and the park will be fully operational in 2020.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 07/25/2014 page16)