Sino-European Circular Economy and Resource Efficiency

About SINCERE

Sino-European Circular Economy and Resource Efficiency (SINCERE)

UCL ISR is leading this six-institutes project, which will develop new economic modelling tools to understand the resource use patterns of China and the EU. The SINCERE project will also address indicators and metrics, institutions and policies, and will examine historical patterns between resource indicators, trade and macro-economic performance, with the overall aim of strengthen collaboration between European and Chinese researchers.

China is at the heart of many resource-related debates. Being portrayed as ‘hungry dragon’ under scrutiny about its greenhouse gas emissions as well as about maritime security, and acknowledged as a leading nation for clean tech and the circular economy – the range of perceptions could hardly be larger. The European Union with its member states, on the other hand, depends on importing a number of natural resources and aims to improve resource efficiency, alongside with attempts to restart a sluggish economy and to create jobs.

The research will provide evidence of considerable value to policymakers. Both the EU and China, along with many EU member states, have adopted high-level policies to advance resource efficiency and circular economy aspirations. However, existing data and insights are limited, both in terms of the likely economic implications of achieving higher levels of resource efficiency, and in terms of the drivers (principally innovation and technological change) of resource efficiency and the way in which these can be influenced by policy.

The SINCERE project is part of a collaborative funding initiative by The Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR France), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG Germany), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC UK), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC China) and the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO Netherlands) on the green economy. The project is supported by an advisory board and it collaborates with stakeholders and other researchers. 

Read more about the project on the SINCERE website

People

UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources

Prof Raimund Bleischwitz

Dr Paolo Agnolucci

Will McDowall

Dr Matthew Winning

Dr Teresa Domenech

Prof Paul Ekins

MINES ParisTech - Centre of Industrial Economics (CERNA)

Prof Matthieu Glachant

Prof Magnus Soderberg

University of Wuppertal - The European Institute for International Economic Relations (EIIW)

Prof Paul Welfens

Nancy Yu

Vladimir Udalov

Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) - Department of Environmental Science and Engineering

Prof Geng Yong

The Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI)

Prof Rainer Walz

Matthias Pfaff

University of Maastricht (UNU-MERIT)

Prof Rene Kemp