Beijing & Shanghai

In late March and early April I was in China again, having a series of meetings with government officials, academics, private sector developers, and energy firms addressing energy efficiency in Chinese cities.  UN ESCAP has made urban energy efficiency one of its strategic goals, and I have been working with personnel there to help develop programs in this area.  The city of Urumqi in western China has also developed a long range energy efficiency plan, developed by a team including the American insulation firm Owens Corning and the German district heating utility MVV Energie.  We were in Beijing to meet with Urumqi officials, and hopefully carbon market financing will help make it happen! 

A number of highlights from the trip: 

In Beijing I had a chance to meet up for lunch with Dr. Wang Weili, of the China International Center for Economic and Technical Exchanges (CICETE, a part of the Ministry of Commerce).  CICETE acts as a liaison between the UN and the Chinese government, and Dr. Wang (center in the photo) and I have been good friends for quite a long time (e.g., we co-authored a paper about urban pollution control in PACE’s journal Sinosphere some ten years ago).  On this trip, I had a chance to meet her son Sheng Ming (right), a very bright young mathematician who has now been accepted for graduate study at a number of prestigious U.S. universities (e.g., Columbia, U. Penn, etc.) — & he’s now trying to decide which one to attend.  We’ve had numerous email conversations about the role of “quants” in the U.S. financial sector, and it was nice to finally meet him in person!  Another CICETE colleague, Li Ke (left in the photo), was also able to join us.  Li Ke coordinated most of my UN project missions around China, and also served as my translator in numerous meetings — I followed her bright pink suitcase through many, many Chinese airports, and never got lost!

In Shanghai I had a chance to meet up with Charlie McElwee, an international energy & environmental lawyer with Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, LLP.  Charlie writes China Environmental Law, a blog that covers China’s energy/environmental scene – and one which I have long recommended to my students and others interested in this area.  It was great to have an opportunity to actually meet the person behind the blog, & I told Charlie that I’m really amazed that he has time for any other activities, such as teaching at Jiao Tong University or his law firm work — given the amount of effort necessary to produce such a thorough and timely blog.

And on the flight home from Beijing, I sat immediately behind Darryl Dawkins.  Those of you who are old-time basketball fans will quickly recognize the name of “Chocolate Thunder,” the colorful, 6’11” character who played center for the Philadelphia 76ers in the late 1970s, & who claimed to be an alien from the planet “Lovetron.”  What was really amazing to me was to watch him reach up & retrieve articles from the overhead storage compartment — without ever leaving his seat!