China Energy Group Kick-started Its First Training on Low Carbon Tools in China

In its latest effort to support Chinese cities in reducing carbon emissions, researchers from the China Energy Group of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory trained 20 Chinese researchers of China’s Shandong Academy of Science in Jinan city on March 6-7 in the use of four low carbon software tools. The trainees expressed great interest in the tools. Future training and tool dissemination efforts are planned through a series of upcoming training workshops later this year.

This first training workshop was organized by and held in the Technology Development Strategy Institute of Shandong Academy of Science in Shandong Province, China. The trainers were Lixuan Hong and Jing Ke of LBNL’s China Energy Group. Twenty energy strategists from the Academy that provide direct advice to Shandong’s provincial government on issues concerning energy conservation and carbon emissions reduction participated in the workshop. The four tools, sponsored by the Energy Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy and introduced to the Chinese audience for the first time, include the Benchmarking and Energy Saving Tool for Low Carbon Cities (BEST Cities), the Urban Form Rapid Assessment Model (Urban RAM), the Eco and Low-carbon Indicator Tool for Evaluating Cities (ELITE Cities), and the Green Resources & Energy Appraising Tool (GREAT). During the training, each of the tools was introduced in terms of purpose, methodology, feature design, and detail functionality.

The Academy placed particular emphasis on learning the BEST Cities tool and scheduled a one-day training for this tool. This policy selection tool was designed based on quantitative energy and carbon inventory and benchmarking as well as based on qualitative evaluation of a city’s competence to act across nine sectors. During the training, Dr. Hong walked the trainees through the tool using pre-entered energy data of Jinan City, the capital of Shandong Province, as a case study. Dr. Hong also introduced international best practices and case studies formulating low carbon city policies in sectors such as industry, buildings, transport, power, solid waste, water, urban green space, and street lighting. According to Dr. Hong, the training generated great interest in and intensive discussions on the capability of the tool to incorporate local expertise and evaluations into the policy selection process, and the opportunities and challenges faced when applying international best practices in China.

Yong Zhou, the Institute Director who first learned the tool during his visit to the China Energy Group a year ago was instrumental in setting up this training workshop because he thinks that the tool can be useful for Chinese research institutes, think-tanks, universities, and city governments when planning city-level low carbon actions. Director Zhou commented that the trainees will need time to digest the 72 sector-specific policies strategies embedded in the tool and apply them to their specific work. But he also suggested to expand the training to researchers from institutes and government think-tanks interested in low carbon development in China.

The China Energy Group is planning more training workshops on the BEST Cities tool (and other three tools) in different Chinese cities this year to field test the tool and to solicit feedback for further improvement before its official release.

For more information on the four tools, please visit the China Energy Group’s website at: https://china.lbl.gov/tools-guidebooks.