Energy Foundation

The Energy Foundation is a grantmaking charity that established its China branch (EF China) in Beijing in 1999. EF China is dedicated to China’s sustainable energy development.

A part of the U.S.-based Energy Foundation, EF China’s mission is to assist in China's transition to a sustainable energy future by promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy. This general operating support award contributes to the organization’s policy research, standards development, capacity building, and best-practices dissemination across multiple themes and sectors including long-term decarbonization strategies, air quality, urbanization, electrification, power, industry, transportation, and more. EF China is focused on China’s institutions and leadership, but draws on its network of international experts to inform the strategies and programs it supports in China. EF China is also the main re-grantor for international philanthropies engaged on climate issues in China. Grantees include leading policy research institutes, academies, think tanks, and NGOs in China and abroad.

Since 1991 the Energy Foundation has supported education and analysis to promote policy solutions that build markets for clean energy technology. Despite the increasingly polarized political landscape, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and other innovations that improve productivity but pollute less than conventional technology continue to garner broad political support. Working closely with other funding partners, Energy Foundation created and supports a powerful, diverse network of state coalitions coordinated by an unbranded campaign infrastructure to share accurate information about the social, economic, and health benefits of clean energy with policymakers, businesses, and consumers. This award supports the expansion of this network to twenty-five states whose collective potential reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from a cleaner energy sector could meet half of the entire U.S. commitment to the Paris Accord. 

The Energy Foundation supports and coordinates sophisticated and effective networks that advance state and federal policies to accelerate clean energy markets. The Energy Foundation supports organizations that promote energy efficiency adoption, carbon reduction policies, and renewable energy development. This work entails state-specific policy analysis, education of state and federal lawmakers, strategic communications, and cultivating grassroots advocacy. Partners include health, labor, environmental, faith, property-rights, clean-energy, and consumer groups, as well as think tanks, universities, and veteran organizations. MacArthur Foundation support ensures that the Energy Foundation can work in states, almost all in the nation’s interior, deemed critical to advancing U.S. leadership on climate change.

The Energy Foundation helps develop a new energy future by making the buildings, power, and transportation sectors more efficient, and by advancing effective policies that open markets for clean energy technology. The U.S. and China represent the largest and fastest growing economies, which together emit 45 percent of the planet’s total global warming emissions. In the United States, the Energy Foundation is actively pursuing a public engagement strategy to broaden support for clean energy policy across several states in the Midwest and Southeast by cultivating relationships with the business, faith, and conservative communities. In China, the organization’s fifteen-year effort to promote clean energy development has made it a trusted partner amongst an exceptional network of environmental non-governmental organizations and political decision-makers. As the Foundation considers what efforts to support domestically and abroad for its climate strategy, the award ensures that the Energy Foundation can provide timely and useful insight about trends to follow, organizations to partner with, and initiatives to support, particularly in China.

The Energy Foundation works to build markets for energy efficiency and renewable power sources to increase the nation’s energy independence, spur economic activity, and reduce the carbon pollution that comes from conventional energy production. Older, affordable rental housing presents excellent opportunities for retrofits that could deliver projected energy savings reliably, and benefit low-income families, building owners and utilities. This grant funds a summit of national, regional, and state environmental and housing groups to craft an integrated strategy to reform utility-led energy efficiency programs for the affordable housing sector across multiple states.