Experts

Joanna Lewis

Joanna Lewis is an assistant professor of Science, Technology and International Affairs (STIA) at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on renewable energy industry and policy development, mechanisms for low-carbon technology transfer in the developing world, and expanding options for multilateral engagement in a post-2012 international climate change agreement. Most of Professor Lewis’ research is based in China. Current projects include studies of China’s wind power industry and solar photovoltaic industry development, the security implications of climate change impacts for China, and the future of the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and China on energy and climate change.

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Georgetown School of Foreign Service
jil9@georgetown.edu
(202) 687-7284

Dr. Lieberthal is director of the John L. Thornton China Center and senior fellow in Foreign Policy and Global Economy and Development at Brookings. Lieberthal served as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asia on the National Security Council from August 1998 to October 2000. His government responsibilities encompassed U.S. policy toward Northeast, East and Southeast Asia.

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The Brookings Institution
kliebert@umich.edu
(202) 797-2494

Denise Mauzerall is an Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.

Her work is focused on utilizing science to inform the development of far-sighted air quality policy by exploring linkages between air pollution and health, energy, and climate change. Her recent research projects have examined the impacts of air pollution on agriculture and health in China, inter-continental transport of air pollutants, environmental consequences and alternatives to nitrogen oxide emissions trading, regional attribution of ozone production and associated radiative forcing to emissions from specific regions of the world, and the benefit that methane emission controls can have on reducing background ozone concentrations and reducing associated impacts on human health and climate change.

She holds a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Chemistry from Harvard University and an M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Stanford University.

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Princeton University
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
mauzeral@princeton.edu
(609) 258-2498

Dr. Irving Mintzer is Senior Advisor and Chief Strategist for the Potomac Energy Fund. He is an internationally recognized expert on energy technologies as well as on the impacts of climate change on human societies and natural ecosystems. In addition, Dr. Mintzer is a Senior Advisor to the Deputy Director of the Office of Intelligence and Counter-intelligence of the U.S. Department of Energy, focusing on the linkages among energy, environment and security issues. Dr. Mintzer received his B.A., an M.B.A. in Applied Economics, and a Ph.D. in Energy and Resources from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Potomac Energy Fund
(301) 695-9229

Kevin Mo

Kevin Mo is a Senior Sustainable Building Specialist for NRDC and is currently working in Beijing, China. He joined NRDC in 2008 and moved to our Beijing office in early 2009. But his connection with NRDC started as early as in year 1999, when he participated in the study workshops for China’s first green building demonstration project led by NRDC. Prior to NRDC, he worked with NAHB Research Center for six years as a researcher focusing on residential buildings and managing an energy efficiency housing award program under Department of Energy’s Building America program. He earned my Ph.D. in Building Performance at Carnegie Mellon University and focused on intelligent buildings and commercial buildings. After studying America’s commercial and residential buildings for 12 years, he’s glad to move back to Beijing, where he received his master’s degree and taught building science in Tsinghua University.

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Natural Resources Defense Council

Chris Nielsen (the science and policy of limiting greenhouse gas emissions in China) is the executive director of the Harvard China Project, of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. Working with researchers across Harvard and collaborating Chinese universities, he has led the development of and managed the interdisciplinary China Project from its inception.

In atmospheric sciences, he and colleagues at Harvard and Tsinghua universities built a high-precision atmospheric measurement station north of Beijing in 2004, and now jointly analyze its unique, ongoing data record. The team combines these independent observations with those of satellites, the Project’s detailed bottom-up emission inventories, and its own advanced atmospheric model of China to investigate transport, chemistry, and environmental impacts of Chinese GHGs and air pollutants.

Another team exploits meteorological data from atmospheric sciences to improve estimates of onshore and offshore wind power potentials in China, and the prospects for integration of very large-scale wind power deployment (see cover article of Science, 09/11/2009).

Nielsen additionally co-leads a Harvard-Tsinghua team of economists, atmospheric chemists, and environmental engineers integrating the Project’s economic and atmospheric models of China, its emission inventories, and a national economy-engineering-health-policy framework developed in Clearing the Air: The Health and Economic Damages of Air Pollution in China (2007, MIT Press). The enhanced framework is used to evaluate the full health and economic benefits and costs of nearly any national strategy to limit Chinese emissions of GHGs and air pollutants. The team is currently assessing the comprehensive effects of economy-wide carbon tax options in China, including alternative tax levels, time-paths of implementation, and uses of tax revenues.

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Harvard China Project
nielsen2@fas.harvard.edu
(617) 496-2378

Rose Niu

Rose Niu works for the World Wildlife Fund’s US branch. A native of China’s Yunnan Province, Rose draws on both her deep roots in the local community and skills she has developed overseas to tackle the environmental challenges while also working to improve the livelihoods of local people. From 2001 to 2010, she has directed TNC’s China Country Program, leading and managing a team of 72 staff in five offices, and representing TNC before government agencies, local and international conservation organizations and funding agencies. Prior to the directorship, Rose served as Chief Representative of TNC’s Yunnan Office in China, playing a leadership role in establishing the organization’s presence in China through the launch of the Yunnan Great Rivers Project in northwest Yunnan Province in 1998.

Before joining the World Wildlife Fund, Rose worked in a managerial capacity for companies in New Zealand and Thailand and for nine years as a Quarantine Officer and Deputy Section Chief of Animal Quarantine for the Kunming Animal and Plant Quarantine Service of the Chinese government. Rose has a master’s degree in Natural Resource Planning and Management from the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand, and a bachelor’s degree in Veterinary Science from the Southwest University for Ethnic Minorities in Chengdu, China. Rose is a native of Yunnan and a member of the Naxi ethnic minority, one of 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People’s Republic of China. She has won numerous awards and honors, including, in 2002, being selected as one of the “25 Stars of Asia” by Business Week and a “Global Conservation Award” from Global Heritage Fund in 2004.

World Wildlife Fund
rose.niu@wwfus.org

Forestry

Stephanie Ohshita works on energy-based solutions to multiple environmental problems—from local air pollution to global climate change—and combines engineering with tools from political economy and organizational analysis. Her research examines international cooperation mechanisms; policy design and implementation; energy efficiency strategies; the diffusion of clean and efficient technology; emissions inventories; and risk management.

Dr. Ohshita is Associate Professor of Environmental Science at the University of San Francisco, and a Visiting Faculty (2009-2010) in the China Energy Group of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Stephanie has worked as a consultant to California government and industry, worked in China since 1996, and in Japan since 1988. She is trained in Chemical Engineering (SB from MIT), and Environmental Engineering and Policy (research associate at Tokyo Institute of Technology; MS and PhD from Stanford University).

Current projects with LBNL and Chinese collaborators include: developing methodology for target allocation in China’s 12th Five-Year Plan (at the national, provincial, city, sectoral, and enterprise levels); and structural change strategies for energy and carbon savings in China.

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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
SBOhshita@lbl.gov
(510) 486-5062

Lynn Price

Lynn Price is a Staff Scientist in the China Energy Group of the Energy Analysis Department, Environmental Energy Technologies Division, of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Ms. Price has a MS in Environmental Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has worked at LBNL since 1990. Ms. Price has been a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, since 1994 and was an author on the industrial sector chapter of IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report on Mitigation of Climate Change.

Since 1999, Ms. Price has provided technical assistance to the Energy Foundation’s China Sustainable Energy Program related to international experience with industrial sector energy efficiency policies. Ms. Price led an effort to introduce Chinese experts and policymakers to international experience with industrial energy efficiency target-setting through development of a pilot program with two steel mills in Shandong Province.

Following the pilot program, China’s National Development and Reform Commission established the Top-1000 Energy-Consuming Enterprises Program in which China’s largest energy-consuming industrial facilities were given energy-saving targets for 2010 in support of the national goal to reduce energy use per unit of GDP by 20% between 2005 and 2010.

Ms. Price is currently providing technical assistance for the Top-1000 Enterprise Program through the Energy Foundation’s China Sustainable Energy Program as well as for a number of projects focused on improvement of energy efficiency and emissions reductions in China’s industrial sector for the U.S. EPA, World Bank, International Energy Agency, and the Asia Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate.

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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
LKPrice@lbl.gov
(510) 486-6519

Industry

David Pumphrey is a Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of the Energy and National Security Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. His work focuses on energy policies and strategies that address US security and climate change challenges. He was most recently Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Energy Cooperation at the Department of Energy.

During his career with the US Federal Government, he worked on a wide range of energy policy issues. Mr. Pumphrey led the development and implementation of policy initiatives with individual countries and multilateral energy organizations. He was responsible for policy engagement with numerous key energy producing and consuming countries including China, India, Canada, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the European Union. Mr. Pumphrey represented the US Government in various committees of the International Energy Agency and the Energy Working Group of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation. Mr. Pumphrey also represented the Department of Energy in the negotiations of the energy related sections of the U.S-Canada Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Mr. Pumphrey received a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from Duke University and a Master’s Degree in Economics George Mason University. He had spoken extensively on international energy issues and testified before Congress on energy security issues related to China and India.

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Center for Strategic and International Studies
dpumphrey@csis.org
(202) 457-8773