The “Tiangong Initiative,” led by Tsinghua University, has been honored with a core award at Brightcon 2025, the global open-source sustainability event held from October 13 to 17. The initiative received the “2025 Brightcon Award for Open Sustainability” for its pioneering contributions to the field of open data.

Professor Xu Ming, Associate Dean of the School of Environment at Tsinghua University, accepted the award on behalf of the Tiangong team. In his speech, he stated that the award not only recognizes the hard work of all participating Tiangong Initiative teams but also acknowledges the long-term commitment of Chinese academic, research, and industry sectors to open science and sustainable development.

“The Tiangong Initiative is dedicated to promoting the mechanism construction of global Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) data through open collaboration,” Professor Xu said. He expected that the initiative will partner with more international organizations in the future to jointly build a trustworthy, transparent, and interoperable global LCA data infrastructure.

Xu Ming accepted the award online on behalf of the Tiangong Team.

2025 Brightcon Award for Open Sustainability

During the conference, Lu Xiaohui, an Assistant Research Fellow at the School of Environment, Tsinghua University, and a Tiangong Initiative member, delivered a report and participated in a panel discussion. She engaged in an in-depth discussion with experts from organizations such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Life Cycle Initiative (LCI) and PRé Sustainability. The discussion focused on critical issues, including building community trust, ensuring data quality and interoperability, and exploring sustainable funding models. Lu Xiaohui shared the Tiangong Initiative’s experiences and forward-looking ideas on these key topics.

About Brightcon and the Award

The Brightcon conference was initiated by Brightway, one of the world’s well-known open-source LCA communities. It has since evolved into a major open-source sustainability event, bringing together representatives from research institutions, international organizations, and businesses. The 2025 conference was themed “Open Data,” focusing on the application and prospects of open-source tools and data in LCA. The newly established “2025 Brightcon Award for Open Sustainability” aims to recognize projects and teams that have made outstanding contributions to open science and collaborative data construction, providing a crucial platform for collaboration within the global data ecosystem.

Editor: Zhang Nannan