Making Appliance Energy Efficiency the New Global Standard

CLASP's global collaboration and research initiatives are motivated by the goal of providing governments, regulatory bodies and policy makers with well-trained energy efficiency S&L experts and the resources to make informed choices about energy efficiency S&L.

CLASP's contribution to global collaboration and research includes facilitating international cooperation and best practices information sharing among S&L policy makers and practitioners worldwide; conducting global research on harmonization, compliance, monitoring, verification and enforcement (MV&E), and product benchmarking; and training and capacity building to expand and strengthen the global pool of S&L practitioners.

Visit Where We Work to see examples of CLASP's current and future global collaboration and research projects.

Facilitating International Collaboration
CLASP facilitates collaboration and information sharing among policy makers worldwide through formal and informal channels. Formal international facilitation efforts include CLASP's Best Practice Network (BPN) partnership as part of the ClimateWorks Foundation's network; role as Operating Agent for the Super-efficient Equipment and Appliance Deployment (SEAD) Initiative; and role as the Secretariat for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation's Energy Standards & Information Systems (APEC ESIS) site.

CLASP's informal international facilitation efforts include CLASP's work to connect S&L experts in related areas. CLASP's efforts at facilitating international collaboration ensures that best practices and up-to-date information are circulated among the global S&L community.

Global Research
CLASP – working in support of policy makers around the world – is committed to furthering research on topics of global relevance including harmonization, compliance, product benchmarking, and MV&E.  These global research themes – overarching areas within the S&L field – benefit from ongoing exploration and study. In addition to utilizing CLASP's in-house research team, CLASP leverages technical analysis and the expertise of the global S&L community to perform global research projects.

• CLASP conducts harmonization research to examine the energy savings possible by international alignment of technical requirements and policy settings to the broadest and most stringent currently in force.

• CLASP surveys existing S&L officials about their programs' MV&E practices to assess global MV&E policies and determine improvements that can be made across many programs.


• CLASP engages in product benchmarking of high energy using products to determine the relative energy efficiencies of a product in varying countries or regions, allowing for a comparison and highlighting which programs have set the bar for appliance efficiency.

CLASP's studies and research findings are presented to the global community at best practices workshops and annual summits and are published online.

Policy makers use CLASP's global research findings about S&L in multiple ways including as a guide to replicating S&L successes, as a resource for planning S&L revisions, as a source for comparative information on the effectiveness of regional S&L initiatives and MV&E programs, and as a source of information with which to educate regional stakeholders about global S&L.

Training and Capacity Building
CLASP engages in ongoing S&L best practice trainings and capacity building for experts and policy makers and their stakeholders alike. Examples of CLASP's training and capacity building projects include the following:

CLASP provides ongoing support to India’s Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) to assess the existing capacity and provide further training and capacity building within government testing facilities.

• CLASP trained Mexico's National Commission for Energy Efficiency (CONUEE) officials on the Policy Analysis Modeling System (PAMS) , a software tool designed to help local policymakers assess the benefit of standards and labeling programs as well as identify the most attractive targets for appliances and efficiency levels. CLASP tailored the PAMS training to Mexico's regional concerns by focusing on refrigerators and room air conditioners, two products of high importance for CONUEE.


• CLASP, in its role as a BPN, convenes an annual global appliance summit – inviting experts, non-governmental organizations, and representatives from climate-focused organizations – to discuss current research, partnerships and collaborations, the current state of S&L, and mutual goals.

CLASP's training and capacity building initiatives are motivated by the belief that training and mobilizing S&L experts leads to great impacts.