The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has a long history of promoting energy efficiency in China. With generous support from the Energy Foundation, NRDC established a Demand Side Management (DSM) Technical Center in Beijing at the end of 2008. The DSM Technical Center is an integral part of NRDC’s and the China Sustainable Energy Program’s (CSEP) goal to help China scale up its capacity to design, administer, implement, and evaluate cost effective energy efficiency programs. The DSM Technical Center is designed to serve as the go-to resource in helping China’s central and provincial governments realize their energy efficiency goals. In 2009, the DSM Technical Center mainly focused on its own internal capacity building to bring staff members up to speed on DSM program best practices and U.S. implementation experiences. In 2010, the DSM Technical Center began building on the advancements of previous years to provide hands-on technical assistance, trainings, and policy implementation support in selected provinces and municipalities in China, specifically Hebei, Jiangsu, Sichuan, Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongqing. In 2011, the DSM Technical Center continued its efforts to support the selected provinces and municipalities, and, in particular, reached out to grid companies to help build technical capacity to implement utility-led DSM programs. The DSM Technical Center has also become a more accessible source of information to the Chinese audience by adopting various forms of outreach strategies in 2011. Our goal was to help scale up DSM and efficiency power plant (EPP) implementation in China. This report provides a detail of our activities under Grant 1011-13558 from March 1-December 31, 2011.

NRDC made significant progress in providing customized support to each of the local partners based on the previous and ongoing efforts to identify local needs, and continuing to strengthen relationships with them.