As an environmental management student, what could be a more enriching experience than to be able to gain a deeper understanding of future tools to alleviating climate change and the environmental stress it is causing. It was, hence, not a surprise that I was exhilarated to become a summer intern at CLP Holdings Ltd. to work on a research project on the different fragmented carbon market that CLP is exposed to.
“A good start is half to success”. However, during my first week, I found myself sitting in front of the computer, feeling totally frustrated and lost about what I actually had to do. In the end, I used the entire first week to construct an executive summary to clear my mind and to give myself a direction for my next steps. When everything was stated and listed out, my task became immediately much easier; dividing the uprising but fragmented markets into Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan and South Korea enabled me to focus on each emission scheme one by one to fill up the sections in my internship report. It took nearly an entire month for me to actually realize the purpose of my internship.
At the writing of this reflection, my internship is now towards the end, with less than 3 weeks to go. The daily routine of surfing carbon finance websites, like Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Point Carbon (Thomson Reuters), is no longer work to me. I do, however, have to be more engaged to obtain more useful information to give recommendations to CLP as a carbon stakeholder. As a result, I started to actively email or phone-call analysts and carbon consultants and gather their views to build something useful. The process is extremely stressful due to my limited knowledge of the carbon trading market, and as a result, numerous questions have to be thrown out or even repeated for me to grasp the idea of some specific terms and phenomena.
This internship has brought me out of my safety zone, as people I speak to are experienced and well-respected in the field. I sometimes feel sorry for them to have to bear with my unorganized interviews and horrible Mandarin. Nevertheless, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to both of my supervisors Kenneth and Michael for letting me fully experience and explore the field. They have been very patient and tolerant in the previous two months in teaching and assisting me. And finally, it has been great working with the other interns at the head office. They are easy to get along with and we have had a lot of fun spending time together.