Beijing

In mid-November I was in Beijing, visiting a number of organizations about the carbon market — including the newly formed CDM Fund. This group takes the funds that the Chinese government collects in “taxes” on Kyoto Protocol CDM transactions — e.g., the 65% fee on HFC destruction — and then invests that money in other climate change and sustainable development activities and projects. The Fund had officially opened only a few days earlier (on November 9th), and quite an amazing coincidence occurred at our meeting.

Ms. Xu Mingzhu & Roger

In greeting the CDM Fund officials, I found out that one of them — Ms. Xu Mingzhu — was a recent Beida graduate. In fact, it turned out that she was the college roommate of Ms. Zhang Xinwei, the moderator of our panel at Columbia U. the previous week! [See the previous posting. I realized much too late that I really should have had my picture taken with Ms. Zhang as well — but perhaps at next year’s CIPA meeting?]