GC3 Energy

Our Work

GC3 Strategy is the operational partner to China Partnership of Greater Philadelphia’s (CPGP) open platform of public private partnership collaboration with the objective of advancing U.S. low-carbon solutions for application in national-level industrial parks in China’s northeastern Jing-Jin-Ji (京津冀) region. GC3 Strategy’s specific role on this BE Better platform is to work with company-specific participants introduced by either CPGP or by any of CPGP’s six primary industry association partners to optimize that company’s participation.

Since late 2017, CPGP has been constructing, together with its Tianjin Economic-technological Development Area (TEDA) partner under the bi-national U.S.-China EcoPartnership program, an open-platform for bringing U.S. low-carbon energy solutions to national-level industrial park users in China’s Northeast . The name given to this platform (and program) is BE Better (with BE standing for Built Environment). The three dimensions of ‘better’ referenced by the BE Better program title are (1) more energy-efficient (2) ‘smarter’ and (3) healthier for occupants. While the BE Better program is potentially applicable across the full spectrum of building types – which account for 39% of carbon emissions in China and, roughly speaking, for the rest of the world) – CPGP is focusing on industrial park applications in China because of limited operational capacity and because of the special stature which our TEDA partner enjoys with NETDZ industrial parks throughout China.  As perennially one of the top two rated national-level industrial parks in China, TEDA has been appointed to serve as Secretary General to the Green Development League network of 36 top-rated NETDZs. Additionally, the PRC Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) has given TEDA specific responsibilities throughout the full network of 219 NETDZs to help monitor performance and to work with poorly-performing NETDZs, particularly to help with lowering carbon emissions. 

In order to give heft and reach to our BE Better program on the U.S. side, we are turning to pairs of invited industry association partnerships to represent each of the dimensions of the BE Better model: (1) ‘more energy efficient and lower carbon,’ (2) ‘smarter’ (i.e., more Internet of Things (IoT) connected with greater IoT security and, for industrial users, utilizing ‘smarter and cleaner’ manufacturing processes), and (3) ‘healthier’ with respect to (a) standards and protocols for promoting the health of building occupants and (b) design of space and operations to safeguard workers from coronavirus-type infections. CPGP intends to announce these six industry association partnerships in December 2020. Looking forward, GC3 Strategy looks forward to working with individual member companies from those six associations to optimize their participation on the BE Better platform by introducing them systematically to one or more tiers of the NETDZs represented in the three-level BE Better platform: (1)  CPGP’s partner and perennially top-ranked NETDZ leader, TEDA, as well as the Beijing and Langfang ETDZs in Jing-Jin-Ji and the nearby Xiongan New Area; (2) 36 of China’s top-ranked, national-level industrial parks represented in the Green Development League with TEDA as Secretary General; and (3) the entire network of 219 NETDZ industrial parks throughout China (with assistance from U.S. Commercial Service personnel at the U.S. Mission in China to manage capacity).

For further information, please refer to:

— the official U.S.-China EcoPartnership Program site

— peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Renewable & Sustainable Energy

— forthcoming case-study in the UPenn PEPALE publication series