Anni, Janosch & Jana

I was very pleased to have two German visitors here at HNC – well, three really, when you consider their daughter Anni…. who pretty much stole the show amongst both students & faculty! I first met Dr. Janosch Ondraczek when he was an intern at the UN in New York – and we’ve stayed in touch over the years. Janosch went on to get a Master’s degree at University College London with a thesis addressing European experience with price vs. quantity policy mechanisms for renewable energy – and he recently completed his doctorate at the University of Hamburg, with another interesting piece of research addressing solar energy in Africa.

I was obviously anxious to have him describe that work to my ‘Challenges in the Global Environment’ class at HNC, which address the problems of energy access (i.e., energy poverty) as well as other major energy/environmental topics. If you have a really good memory, you might remember Janosch addressing a similar class of mine at U. Penn (in an April, 2008 posting). Janosch works at PwC, and you can follow him on his own blog at: Earth, 53N 35′ 0.41″, 10E 0′ 44.72″.

Janosch’s wife, Dr. Jana Stoever, is similarly an environmental economist who has worked at the World Bank, and now does research at the Hamburg Institute of International Economics. And so of course we took the opportunity to tap into her expertise on this visit as well! As the formal guest of HNC, she presented a lecture entitled ‘Environmental Regulation and Sustainable Business Performance,’ which described on-going research into the Porter Hypothesis (which suggests that businesses subject to stringent environmental regulation will become more innovative and ultimately more competitive).

Little Anni managed to get by without an HNC speaking engagement…. but by the end of the visit, it seemed that her Mandarin was just about on par with my own.