Many participants reiterated what the IEEP officials told RO during the development of the training course. Inspite of the significant efforts and achievements China has done in the field of integrated rural energy planning, wood and biomass energy have not received the attention they deserve proportional to the significant role they play in providing the energy needs of the country. Everyone expressed their appreciation for being invited to participate the training course and mentioned that they have learned a great deal from it. They acknowledged that integrating wood energy in energy planning, starting from data collection, can be a very difficult exercise. However, everyone agreed the need and importance of this exercise, particularly, the need to do planning at the decentralized level.
China is in the middle of rapid economic transformation, requiring huge amount of energy.
Every possible resource is being harnessed to fuel this economic growth and development. The course provided a planning method for the participants to adopt a technique that may allow them to plan and formulate efficient and sustainable strategies for maximizing the contribution of wood and biomass fuels in this economic transformation, particularly that of China's rural areas. A two-week training like this one is definitely not adequate to make people skilled enough to apply and practice the concepts they have learned immediately after the course. The course provided the basic concepts. It is the experiences generated from the actual applications of the concepts that can provide deeper understanding of them.