Walking on a street in Beijing, the cold and perhaps polluted air touches our faces.  We recognized that this is the end of another year and another winter.  At this same time last year, DESC was officially launched – featured with an international conference drawing representatives from industry, government, research institutes, NGOs and media.  The DESC China report “ICT and China’s Low Carbon Growth” was officially released at the conference.

Twelve months have quickly flown by, and we look back and feel the past year was full of excitement.  Just a few days ago, I made a presentation on ICT’s role on energy efficiency.  Afterwards, an official of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), China’s agency responsible for industry management, came with great interest and started a deep conversation with me.  It was obvious that the official was quickly convinced that ICT can contribute to energy efficiency and reduce carbon footprints, and that policy can play a critical role in the process.  Ten minutes later, he invited DESC China to make a one on one presentation to his boss, the MIIT general director who is responsible for energy efficiency.  This is an amazing opportunity.  It is great to produce a paper, but it is greater to have the paper’s concept accepted by policy makers.  While the one on one presentation date is still being scheduled, we look forward to that monumental day for DESC China.

With the support of member companies, in the past twelve months DESC China has also established a good relationship with China’s climate change and environment protection policy makers from another key government agency, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). The NDRC has responded warmly to DESC China’s plan for ICT energy efficiency, and it turn has demonstrated the industry’s intention to contribute to China’s energy efficiency macro story.

Well received by the Chinese government, DESC China successfully gathered a group of companies including Intel, Nokia andLenovo, with China’s leading think tank Energy Research Institute (ERI) and NDRC for a joint research project on what and how ICT can help China transfer from an energy-intense economy to a low carbon economy.  ERI is affiliated with NDRC and has advised the Chinese government on almost all major energy and climate policies in the past 20 years, including the top-1000 enterprises project and the energy management contract program. In addition, we are excited to get support from the Energy Foundation, a major grant-making organization on energy and climate issues in the US and China. This industry-government-NGO project alliance will design a policy framework and help the Chinese government to establish a set of policies, standards and technical norms using ICT to reduce the carbon footprint in China. Furthermore, key NDRC and MIIT policy makers are committed to involvement in the project and ready to listen.

All these efforts are promising; yet a long road is still ahead of us. DESC China is still small and we need broader representation from other sectors and non-industry organizations.  Though there are has been a large amount of interest, we need to focus it.  We don’t know where we will be next winter, but there is no doubt that DSEC China will continue to grow. We look forward to and will work towards its success.  Stay tuned.