Progressing to Net-Zero Through Carbon Capture & Energy Storage

Chunshan SONG is the Dean of the Faculty of Science and Wei Lun Professor of Chemistry at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Pennsylvania State University in the US where he was Director of Energy Institute, Distinguished Professor of Fuel Science and Chemical Engineering, and the founding Director of the University Coalition for Fossil Energy Research consisting of 15 US universities funded by the US Department of Energy. He received PhD and MS in Applied Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Masakatsu Nomura at Osaka University, Japan, and BS in Chemical Engineering from Dalian University of Technology, China. He began CO2 research in the 1990s, and is widely recognized as one of the world leaders in CO2 capture and utilization research. His work focuses on the catalysis and chemistry of energy and fuels including CO2 capture, catalytic/plasma-catalytic CO2 conversion to chemicals and fuels; adsorptive desulfurization and catalytic processing of fuels; shape-selective catalysis; synthesis and application of nano-porous materials. He has 560 refereed journal articles, 9 patents, 15 edited books, and 35 book chapters (with 60,000 citations and H-index of 118 in Google Scholar, Jul 2026). He has received George A. Olah Award in Hydrocarbon or Petroleum Chemistry and Henry H. Storch Award in Energy Chemistry from American Chemical Society (ACS), Fulbright Distinguished Scholar from US-UK; ACS Fellow; ACS Energy & Fuels Distinguished Researcher Award; Outstanding Achievement Award from the Chinese American Chemical Society; Chang Jiang Scholar Award from Ministry of Education of China; Fellow of RSC; and Distinguished Fellow of International Association for Carbon Capture. Within Penn State, he was recognized by the Faculty Scholar Medal, Distinguished Professor, Faculty Mentoring Award, and Matthew and Anne Wilson Award for Excellence in Research. Most recently he received the Michele Aresta Prize in CO2 Utilization Research at ICCDU in Lisbon, Portugal in 2025, and the 2025 Pioneer in Energy Research (PIER) by the ACS journal “Energy and Fuels” in the field of carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS). He was elected as 2025 Fellow of Hong Kong Academy of Engineering (HKAE).

Dr. Xiao “Leo” LIAO is Co-founder and VP of DeCarbon Tech (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. and an internationally certified Registered Technology Transfer Professional (RTTP). He previously served as Deputy General Manager of China Resources Intellectual Property Management Co., Ltd. and Deputy Director of the Technology Transfer Center at the Southern University of Science and Technology.

Dr. LIAO obtained his PhD from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and has more than ten years of study and professional experience in Hong Kong. He has extensive experience in technology commercialization, technology start-up incubation and the industrial application of advanced technologies, having supported the commercialization of nearly 40 frontier technology projects.

As an inventor, he has been granted 15 Chinese invention patents and seven US patents. His honours include a Gold Medal with the Congratulations of the Jury at the International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva and the Hong Kong Awards for Industries: Equipment and Machinery Design Award. He also serves on the ATTP Global Technology Transfer Standards Committee and the AUTM East Asia Strategy Committee.

My Sustainability Goals for 2026:

• Develop Hong Kong into a regional hub for high-integrity carbon markets and carbon removal;
• Accelerate the deployment of trial sites in Hong Kong, or partner with HK companies.

Prof. Jin Shang is a Professor in the School of Energy and Environment at City University of Hong Kong, where he leads the Adsorption Separation Laboratory. He earned his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Melbourne and subsequently undertook postdoctoral research at the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC), the University of Melbourne, and the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research advances adsorption-based gas separation for carbon capture and removal, natural gas purification, air separation, and toxic gas abatement. He discovered the molecular trapdoor mechanism, now recognized as the fourth major adsorption-based separation mechanism, which enables non-size-based molecular sieving. His honors include the 2024 Carbon Capture Award for Excellent Research and the 2022 ISTP-Bogen Young Scientist Award. He has published more than 150 papers, received over 9,900 citations, achieved an h-index of 57, and has been listed among Stanford’s top 2% most-cited scientists.

My Sustainability Goals for 2026:
1. Accelerate real-world deployment of carbon-management technologies.
I hope Hong Kong will establish more large-scale demonstration projects that move carbon capture, utilisation and removal technologies beyond the laboratory, particularly in buildings, data centres, transport infrastructure and other hard-to-abate sectors.

2. Promote integrated, energy-efficient net-zero solutions.
Hong Kong should better connect carbon capture with renewable energy, energy storage, waste-heat recovery and advanced cooling systems, enabling emissions reduction without imposing excessive energy or economic costs.

3. Strengthen Hong Kong’s climate-technology ecosystem.
I hope to see closer collaboration among universities, government, industry and investors, supported by shared pilot facilities, innovation-friendly procurement and funding mechanisms that help locally developed technologies progress from research to commercial implementation.