Jingyi Han

China is a developing country with population exceeding 1.3 billion and economic growth averaging around 8%. Its demand for energy has surged to fuel its rapidly expanding industrial and commercial sectors as well as households experiencing rising living standards, that results in two serious problems: energy insecurity and environmental pollution. Therefore, Chinese government started to pay its attention to renewable energies development at the end of 1980’s, following some advanced countries. However, all renewable energy policies remain un-audited, because policies have never been targets of auditing. So, the purpose of this research is to raise some suggestions for environmental auditing methodology for renewable energy polices.

 Compared to developed countries, China lags far behind in developing and implementing environmental auditing. Lessons can be learned from those countries to push on China’s environmental auditing development. But, structure of China’s auditing system is quite different from that of developed countries, and most of the energy audit practices that have been conducted in China focus on energy efficiency of facilities, public buildings and dwelling houses. These make it difficult to transfer western environmental auditing principles, methodologies and experiences directly to China.

 Obviously, it is not necessary to “create” new auditing methodology. Auditing methods can be drawn from policy evaluation researches, because auditing and policy evaluation are closely interrelated. Therefore, the main objective of this research is to find how policy evaluation methods can be modified to auditing methodology and improve it to fit China’s circumstances essential.