Today’s episode is a very special episode for us, as we’re honored to have three founding members of Beijing Energy Network, Brendan Acord, Jason Lee, and Julian Wong, with us to celebrate our approximately 100th episode at Environment China. 

The episode has 3 very different parts. These time stamps should help you navigate:

1. In the first segment, starting at 0:03, we discuss how BEN got started, what made it different, and what it was like working on energy and the environment in 2008-09.
2. At 0:22, Joyce and Helena discuss BEN in the past few years and how it has evolved.
3. At 0:26, we look out to the next 13 years of world climate and energy futures, by playing a game of buy-sell-or-hold.

Our guests:

Brendan Acord came to China after graduating from UCSD, He worked at AES consulting and later BrightSource Energy, and he is currently in Chengdu where he manages a solar PV consultancy which has projects in China and abroad.

Julian Wong is a corporate lawyer, currently at QuantumScape, a company in Silicon Valley developing advanced battery materials. He’s been passionate about environmental issues since growing up. He moved to China in 2008. He returned to DC and worked at the Center for American Progress, and then worked with David Sandalow at the Department of Energy on US-China issues.

Jason Lee, works in business strategy at AirBnB. He came to China under the Fulbright program working on China energy policy research. Afterwards he did energy consulting at McKinsey.