Asian Climate Change Book

I mentioned a joint Civic Exchange / Singapore Institute of International Affairs project in the Singapore posting earlier this year, and now the project's book about climate change in Asia has been released -- just in time for the Pozna? COP meeting in Poland early next month. I hope you'll especially check out Chapter 10: Carbon Markets & Emissions Trading in Asia, by yours truly.

The book's recent launch in Hong Kong featured something else I hope you'll check out: a presentation by Li Shaoyi, who runs the energy program at the UN's regional commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP). Shaoyi is a very good friend and colleague who used to be at UN headquarters in New York -- our offices were immediately adjacent to each other, & he was also my boss on a number of the China projects listed on my website. In addition to those coal combustion and wind energy projects, Shaoyi was in charge of major GEF programs promoting the rapid commercialization of renewable energy technologies in China, as well as solar hot water, landfill gas, and village power systems there. I was recently teasing him because I actually met someone in China's energy sector who didn't know him -- an extremely rare occurrence indeed!! Shaoyi is truly one of the UN's most valuable resources -- a veritable Asian energy guru!!

And many, many thanks once again to Christine Loh of Civic Exchange and Simon Tay of the SIIA for inviting me to participate in their project -- I very much enjoyed the experience. Andy Stevenson deserves kudos for the considerable (& very helpful!) editorial work on my chapter. (I'm always convinced that others will have great difficulty improving my writing…. but of course Andy seemed to have no problems at all in doing just that!)