RAP has been working closely with Chinese authorities since 1999 to provide research, analysis, and training on power sector policy and related environmental regulation. We collaborate with the Energy Foundation's China Sustainable Energy Program and support a network of international experts, including Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s China Energy Group and the Center for Resource Solutions. We work to develop the institutional capacity of China’s regulatory bodies, ministries, and policy research organizations, as well as industry and non-governmental organizations, to help China identify, develop, and implement policies that will produce substantial and reductions in the electric sector’s greenhouse gas emissions.

RAP’s recent work in China includes:

• Efficiency Power Plants (EPPs): We are supporting pilot EPPs – our innovative alternative to conventional plants – around China. An EPP is a carefully selected bundle of energy efficiency programs that can be integrated into power sector planning and financing.


• Demand Side Management (DSM) Technical Centers: In order to bolster and promulgate EPPs in China, RAP is also supporting the Center for Industrial and Energy Efficiency and the Natural Resources Defense Council's DSM Center, with activities that include training sessions and best-practices dissemination.


• Power Sector Regulation: RAP helped the government design the State Electricity Regulatory Commission. We now advise the commission on transmission policy, pricing, and a range of other issues. (See RAP's China’s Power Sector: A Backgrounder for International Regulators and Policy Advisors).


• Renewable Energy Law: We assisted the Chinese government in designing and implementing the 2006 Renewables Energy Law, which included a 15% renewables target for total energy consumption. The law also established a grid dispatch system that gives priority to renewable resources, created a special fund for renewable energy development, and set out preferential credit and tax policies. As a result, installed wind capacity has doubled annually since 2006.


• Wind Integration: RAP supports an international renewables team that is working with the government on planning and policy to promote integration of the new wind capacity into the electric system.


• Climate-friendly Air Quality Management: This project aims to identify, design, pilot, and promulgate strategies that simultaneously improve air quality and combat climate change. (See RAP's Recommendations for China’s Forthcoming Regional Air Quality Management Regulation).


• Environmental Dispatch: RAP’s work over the last decade has supported the development and adoption of a new, first-in-the-world method of operating the electric system in real time. The operational order (or “dispatch”) of generating facilities will be determined by environmental characteristics rather than cost.


• Clean First: Our project aims to better align national power sector policies with national environmental policies and priorities. In this work, RAP brings together regulators from the environmental and power sectors to evaluate the environmental costs and benefits of policies in the power sector.