RAP and its partners are advising Chinese officials on the development of new and much-anticipated demand-side management (DSM) regulations, which define energy efficiency as a resource and require that it be given priority over supply-side investments to meet electricity demand growth.
The rules also require Chinese grid companies to achieve specific energy savings targets, similar to energy efficiency obligations placed on electricity suppliers in some states in the US and several other countries. The rules open the door to eventual recovery of energy efficiency costs through electricity rates in allowing the costs related to energy efficiency to be treated in the same way as power supply costs.
In November 2010, RAP presented a workshop for nearly four dozen State Electricity Regulatory Commission (SERC) officials, focusing on the role of power sector regulators in promoting DSM and energy efficiency.
RAP has also sponsored a series of national training workshops with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Beijing aimed at implementing DSM and energy efficiency projects. The first workshop, Planning and Constructing an Efficiency Power Plant, was held in Beijing in early June 2010 and drew about 70 attendees from a range of provinces to discuss using a portfolio approach to implement efficiency power plants. (An EPP is a carefully selected portfolio of energy efficiency projects that provides a specified quantity of load reduction with a level of reliability similar to the output from a conventional power plant.) A second workshop, the International Forum on Energy Efficiency Savings Evaluation, Measurement and Verification Methodologies, was held in September 2010.
RAP and its partners will continue to assist SERC and other Chinese organizations with the challenge of implementing the groundbreaking DSM rule and its mandate for grid company investment in energy efficiency. Read more about the significance of the new DSM rule in this NRDC blog post.
