China Energy Group Gave the First Training on Its Energy and Emissions Modeling Tool in China

At the invitation of a Chinese government think-tank to provide scientific guidance to address China's energy and environmental concerns, the China Energy Group (CEG) of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory gave its first training on its energy and emissions modeling tool in China between March 5 and 28, 2014.

The 10-day training in Jinan City on the use of the Green Resources and Energy Appraisal Tool (GREAT), whose development was funded by the Energy Foundation, was organized by the Institute of Science and Technology for Development of Shandong (ISTD), a provincial government think-tank based in Jinan City of Shandong province in Northeast China. Yong Zhou, the Deputy Director of the ISTD and the initiator of this training who learned the tool during his one-year visit to the CEG, said the government has been contemplating how to keep energy consumption and greenhouse gas and pollutant emissions in check while continuing to pursue economic growth and structural change. He thinks any policy to reduce energy use and emissions may not be effective without a scientific understanding of relation and interaction of relevant factors that come into play, and he believes the GREAT tool may help the local government in its exploration of opportunities to save energy and reduce emissions as well as help the government develop action plans for low carbon development based on the discoveries. Twenty researchers and graduate students from the ISTD participated this training.

Jing Ke, a Ph.D. researcher from the CEG and a seasoned energy modeler involved in developing the GREAT tool, served as the instructor for this training. Dr. Ke pointed out during training that the energy saving potential varies between sectors and even varies between industrial companies within the same sector, and therefore it is not fair to assign the same percentage saving targets to companies with different levels of technical capability. For this, Dr. Ke explained that the GREAT tool is an integrated bottom-up, energy end-use based modeling and accounting tool for tracking energy consumption, production, and resource extraction in all economic sectors on a city, provincial, or regional level. The tool allows users such as energy policy analysts and researchers to customize the model to a given city or region by entering detailed actual and/or projected end-use stock, energy intensity, and fuel share data points (where available) for technologies within each sector. To help trainees understand the thought process in the tool design and how to use all these features offered by this complex modeling tool, Dr. Ke walked them through the tool using case studies and had trainees practice step by step at their own pace.

According to Deputy Director Zhou, the ISTD is planning to build a team specializing in quantitative analyses by applying advanced scientific tools to studies concerning local economic development, restructure of industry and energy and consumption, a national cap in total coal and energy consumption and total carbon and pollutant emissions, as well as the significant impacts of water constraints on economic growth and societal development.