At the occasion of the visit of Dr. Gundelach, State Secretary of the Hamburg Office for Urban Planning and Environment, in Shanghai, the campaign ecobuild has been officially launched, with an event on the topic “energy efficient building for sustainable city development” on November 8th.

About 60 participants took part in the seminar, during which Dr. Gundelach reviewed Hamburg’s approach to a sustainable city development. Prof. Dr. Wu Zhiqiang, dean from the Urban Planning and Architecture College of Tongji University, presented the efforts of the city of Shanghai in view of the World Expo 2010, covering energy efficiency, water management and innovative transportation technologies.

The next day, a media roundtable offered an opportunity to local and regional media to get direct insight from Dr. Gundelach on the topic of energy efficiency and sustainable city development in Hamburg. She also reported on the implementation of the European Solar Building Exhibition, which Hamburg coordinated and which was at the origin of the ecobuild shanghai 2006.

The state secretary was accompanied by Mr. Fiedler from the Hamburg Stadtreinigung and Dr. Augustin, from the Hamburg Public Sewage Company, who visited several institutions in Shanghai, including the Shanghai Water Authority, the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau and the Shanghai Sanitation and City Appearance Bureau with the objective to further promote Hamburg-Shanghai cooperation in the field of environmental protection. Furthermore, the HSE is offering its innovative solutions in terms of water infrastructure to several projects in the frame of ecobuild .

The ecobuild campaign launched with the event on the 8th November consists of one year of building energy efficiency related events, thematic conferences, technical workshops and further promotional activities, and results in November 2006 with the exhibition of the various building projects in Shanghai, planned and constructed with the technical assistance from Hamburg experts.