Spring Semester

I returned Stateside from Bologna in April in order to get my covid vaccination shots – with a newly grown ‘quarantine beard’ evident in the Zoom screenshot above. The last time I had a beard was in the 1970s, and many people did not realize that the young “hirsute air pollution guy” in a previous posting was, in fact, me! [With all the gray hair, I doubt they’ll have that problem now.]

But with the eight MA thesis students and a full teaching load, it was a very, very busy semester. Of course, I did my Springtime lectures at the IFP School – and this year upped the game with lectures in January, April and May…. & even that wasn’t enough time with these soon-to-be (and current) energy executives. Professor Bu Maoliang of Nanjing University’s Business School also kindly invited me to give a lecture to his MBA students addressing some recent thinking about carbon mitigation approaches. Professor Bu and I have a weekly Zoom chat — a highlight of my week that provides me with many new books to read, and also keeps me attuned to all the happenings in Nanjing!

It seems that HNC’s 30th Anniversary posting was just a short blink ago…. but this year we’re already celebrating the 35th Anniversary. Most of the ceremonies are scheduled for later in the year, but Professor Bu and I got off to a head start by co-hosting a meeting entitled Green Technology Innovation and Climate Cooperation Between the U.S., China, and Beyond. We had well over a hundred people (i.e., alumni, current students, faculty, and supporters of the HNC) at the May webinar, and the session highlighted four of our HNC ERE alum: Cheng Huihui, who is a senior researcher at Clean Air Asia in Beijing; Nick Manthey, who works on blockchain carbon credit technology at Synergy Blockchain in Beijing; Anneliese Gegenheimer, a DC-based HNC grad who handles financing for clean energy projects in emerging markets around the world; and Li Shuo, the well-known Senior Climate and Energy Policy Officer at Greenpeace China in Beijing. Many thanks are also due to Amanda Bogan, another HNC alum (not ERE though – we couldn’t convince her!) who handled all of the arrangements, logistics, and Zoom-type necessities.