Mayors Plan for Greener China

7/21/2010 - Stephen Hammer is the Executive Director of the Energy Smart Cities Initiative at JUCCCE, the Joint US-China Collaboration on Clean Energy.  He and the Initiative are providing training and planning assistance to mayors in cities all over China to help plan for a greener future.

Interview Transcript

THE CHINA BUSINESS NETWORK: This is Janet Carmosky, CEO and Editor in Chief of The China Business Network. We’re talking today to Steve Hammer, PhD. He’s the Executive Director of the Energy Smart City initiative with the Joint US-China Collaboration on Clean Energy, also known as JUCCCE. They’re out and about doing all kinds of great stuff with US-China collaboration. Welcome, Steve.

STEPHEN HAMMER: Thanks very much.

TCBN: Now, you’re in the project with the mayors of China, formally titled “The Mayoral Training Program on Energy Smart Cities.” What is that about?

SH: Well you have to go back to the history of how JUCCCE was first formed three years ago. Coming out of a forum event at a conference that involved US government and Chinese government high level participation – this was organized by Peggy Liu, the Chairperson of JUCCCE. As a result of that conference, JUCCCE was invited to collaborate with what was then known as the National Training Center for Mayors of China. It’s now known as the National Academy for Mayors of China. It’s a division of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, which used to be known as the Ministry of Construction. The training center, as the name implies, provides all kinds of training resources to mayors, vice-mayors, and top officials at the provincial level across China. JUCCCE was invited to come in and help develop a program that would focus specifically on energy efficiency issues. 

We’ve now run five different training sessions of varying lengths: we have one-day modules that plug into a much longer 30-day training curriculum that the training center manages. We also have our own free-standing 7-day session – this year it was actually nine days. It’s completely separate; a different group of mayors are invited in to participate. We run through the entire set of issues that are really germane to their role in local government as it relates to energy and all the different forms of energy. It will relate to urban planning or transportation planning issues, water, waste, economic development in the form of green job creation in energy-efficient industries that can be attracted to a city. 

We try and walk the mayors through all of these different topics, generate conversation, bring in experts from around China and around the world to give them different perspectives on the issues. We’ve done a good job attracting high level government officials from other cities that are real leaders on this. We’ve had officials from New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s office, we’ve had the former Deputy Mayor of London, Nicky Gavron, who participated last year. We had the Sustainability Coordinator from the city of Seoul come in. We’re trying to get a good geographic mix to give the mayors a mix of how different cities are approaching these environmental issues, the policy instruments they’re pursuing, the type of specific strategies that they’re pursuing. That’s really one of the most interesting things we’re finding, that they mayors are very intrigued by the specific strategies that different cities are pursuing. They like to dig into case study examples, they like to have extended conversations talking about different policies that are being pursued in different areas.

TCBN: That sounds fantastic! You’ve got leaders at essentially the same level of responsibility from different cities in China and mayors from other parts of the world really putting their heads together about how they’re approaching the issues. What happens next, once the strategies are talked about and ideas are exchanged? Do you also do technical assistance to help implement the plans?

SH: This year we’re expanding. Our first year was 2009 when we first started the training program, so it was really focused just on delivering that training. In 2010 we began to expand our program so now we can do a lot more follow up with mayors in their cities directly. We’re very fortunate that people responded very to the training. They liked what they were hearing and the experts we were bringing in, and they thought highly of how we are approaching this. And so we were being invited to work with them directly in their cities but we didn’t really have the ability to do that. Well now we do. 

After the 9-day training program we ran in June there are at least six cities that have asked us to come work with them on different issues. In some cases it’s a shorter version of the training program that we’re talking to them about developing for their city that would target local authority staff. In other cases it’s a much more specific issue, so it may be the development of a new industrial park that they’d like to turn into an eco-industrial park. One city is very focused on solid waste management issues in 2010-2011, and we’ve already begun providing research support to them on specific waste-related issues. We’re also talking about developing a very targeted one-day training program just on waste where we bring in international experts and Chinese experts who can talk about different technology, different policy approaches so they can really understand what’s the state of the art, globally, on this issue. Solid waste is proving to be such a huge issue for most cities around China. It wasn’t something we expected to focus on, but it turns out this is an issue that they mayors are really focused on. It’s sheer necessity – they’ve got to get rid of the stuff every day.

TCBN: I’m going to have to ask this question, because we’re The China Business Network. How does business come in and support either the technical assistance or the advisory on the strategy of how Chinese cities are going to solve these problems? Very specifically – are you finding there are businesses that have technologies or processes in the United States that want to be involved in rolling up their sleeves and getting into this problem. Are you finding sponsors, researchers, donators, or vendors for these Chinese cities? Has it gone in that direction?

SH: Well, support from the private sector has been critical to JUCCCE over the last three years. We’ve received lots of in-kind support, technical support from different companies who are based in China and some companies based in the US who believe in what we’re trying to do, and they want to support that. But perhaps the most direct support has come in the form of people who are participating in our training programs. I’ve been focused on urban energy and urban climate topics for a fairly long time, so I know a lot of people who are working on these issues, and we’ve have really good luck when we reach out to my network and the larger JUCCCE network.

TCBN: Didn’t you also come out of the waste management business?

SH: I spent a lot of time in that. I willingly left the industry, but it turns out that when you’re talking about energy these days that you keep getting dragged back! There are so many different forms of clean power generation, anaerobic digestion – 

TCBN: There’s always waste.

SH: There are lots of different energy efficiency opportunities you can capitalize on. It’s actually a very helpful background for me. But like I was saying, the support we’ve been receiving from these experts – from technology companies, from planning architecture firms, from management consulting companies, all of whom are happy to share their expertise as part of the training program. So we put the curriculum together with the training center and we work with them to figure out who would be the appropriate speakers on different subjects. We’re slowly changing the types of topics that we tend to address. We try to mix it up so we’re not always touching on the same issues. 

But we do have opportunities for people to come in and get involved, either to provide a specific case study about a technology implemented to promote water conservation in a city, or a technology that has been deployed as part of a transportation system in a city. Those are the opportunities that we really want to help to sell the stories – not necessarily sell the technology, but sell the idea that people are experimenting. They’re trying out different technologies and it’s information that local governments in China should know about. Again, we’re not saying to buy this technology or buy that service, we’re saying “understand that this has been valuable in another context, in another city.”

What we’d like to do, through our technical assistance efforts and through the training programs, and through our extended resource library that we make available to the mayors, is to help them understand that this is one of many ideas that they may consider. We see it as a very fundamental part of our mission to make sure they learn about the universe of ideas that are out there by bringing in private sector expertise, university professors from China and the US, NGO and development bank experts, all who can talk at either a very high level or a very detailed level about what they’re seeing on the ground in Chinese cities, or other leading cities around the world.

TCBN: Tell us Steve, where can you be reached or how would you like to be reached? And let us know, if you have a clear idea, who you’d really like to contact you. If there’s a clean energy, or energy-smart city ecosystem out there that would make your day if someone from that part of the world called you with an offer to help.

SH: First off, the website is www.JUCCCE.com. We also have a twitter feed that people can follow. Peggy Liu is often posting information on the twitter feed. In terms of who we’re hoping to hear from, we’re really focused on folks who are – to be clear, JUCCCE is targeting a variety of different topics through its work. JUCCCE is focused on trying to identify key technologies or key decision points or key decision makers who can influence the type and amount of energy that is being consumed in China. So we have a smart grid initiative, we have an initiative that focuses on consumer products and consumer purchasing habits, we’re slowing working to develop an educational curriculum that can be made available to schools in China. The Energy Smart Cities initiative in some ways covers all these other areas, but it’s unique in that we look at the city as an ecosystem. So that means we have to pay attention to the kinds of technologies that are appropriate at any scale. 

Part of what we’re really focused on is this cross-border information sharing. We’re really interested in bringing ideas to China and also bringing information back from China to the rest of the world. Another thing JUCCCE is also focused on is to make sure people have a good understanding of what is actually occurring on the ground there. There is so much that can be talked about that most people have no idea of the scale of the initiative or the speed at which different initiatives are being pursued.

TCBN: That’s great. It’s a really helpful way of focusing the path forward and the kind of experience that are most likely to benefit the program and themselves. I would like to say that Steve Hammer is a Charter Member of The China Business Network. If you want to know more about Steve, click on his profile in our Directory, and if you’re also a member you can message him. Otherwise, go to www.juccce.com and check out all the stuff that JUCCCE is doing to green China. Thanks a lot for being with us, Steve. 

SH: Thanks very much. 


Dr. Stephen A. Hammer is the Executive Director of the Energy Smart Cities Initiative, which provides training and technical assistance to cities across China on energy efficiency and sustainability issues. Dr. Hammer was previously Director of the Urban Energy Project at Columbia University’s Center for Energy, Marine Transportation and Public Policy, where he continues to teach graduate seminars on urban energy systems and technology.  Find out more on his profile!