Building on international comparative analysis of energy efficiency technology and policy, Ms. Price turned her attention to rapidly expanding industry in China. Seeing a significant potential for energy savings yet insufficient policies to realize those savings, Lynn searched for strategies that would work in the Chinese context. In the early 2000s, she identified an innovative strategy: “voluntary agreements” pioneered by the Netherlands. This approach involves the government negotiating with industrial enterprises and offering technical support and other incentives in exchange for meeting energy-saving and emission-reduction targets. She then designed a pilot project with two large steel enterprises in Shandong Province and government officials who carried out the project with technical support from her team.
Following the successful pilots, the Chinese government applied the approach nationally to the 1000 largest energy-consuming industrial enterprises. The Top-1000 Enterprise Program, which covered 50% of China’s industrial energy use, surpassed its energy-savings goal by 50% and reduced CO2 emissions by ~350 MtCO2 from 2006-2010. The Chinese government expanded this program to the Top-10,000 Enterprise Program, which ultimately avoided emissions of over 700 MtCO2. In 2013, The Economist called the policy “arguably the single most important climate policy in the world.”
Ms. Price and her team developed a suite of computer tools and training programs for on-site energy assessments of complex industrial facilities to support these industry programs. This work included developing the Benchmarking and Energy Saving Tool for Cement manufacturing (BEST-Cement) that was used by hundreds of cement facilities in China, which manufactures more than half of all cement produced worldwide. Ms. Price conducted numerous energy assessments and week-long training workshops in cement, steel, aluminum, petrochemical, paper, and other manufacturing facilities that were attended by hundreds, including government representatives, industrial engineers, energy conservation centers, research institutions, energy service companies, and U.S. companies such as Dow Chemical, GE, 3M, Alcoa, and Honeywell.
Based on her extensive experience, Ms. Price was invited to be a lead author on six reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the most unbiased, credible, and prestigious body addressing issues of climate change. For over two decades, Ms. Price has served the IPCC as a global leader on energy efficiency and as one of a small number of professionals who have critical knowledge of energy efficiency opportunities across the industrial sector, which contributes as much as 40% of global CO2 emissions.
