As part of its commitment to promoting and improving the local enforcement of appliance energyefficiency standards and labeling, the China National Institute of Standardization launched the Nationaland Local Enforcement of Energy Efficiency Standards and Labeling program on August 14, 2009. For thisprogram, Jiangsu, Shandong, Sichuan and Shanghai were selected as pilot locations. This paper providesinformation on the local enforcement program's recent background, activities and results as well ascomparison to previous rounds of check-testing in 2006 and 2007. In addition, the paper also offersevaluation on the achievement and weaknesses in the local enforcement scheme and recommendationsbased on international experience.

The results demonstrate both improvement and some backsliding. Enforcement schemes are in place inall target cities and applicable national standards and regulations were followed as the basis for localcheck testing. Check testing results show in general high labeling compliance across regions for fiveproducts. But it also identified key weaknesses in labeling compliance in Sichuan as well as in theefficiency standards compliance levels for small and medium three-phase asynchronous motors and selfballastedfluorescent lamps. In the case of refrigerators, in particular, the efficiency standardscompliance rate exhibited a wider range of 50% to 100%, and the average rate across all tested modelsalso dropped from 96% in 2007 to 63% in 2009, possibly due to the implementation of newlystrengthened efficiency standards. This paper also identified areas for improvement includingawareness at the local level, product sampling methodology, and testing tools and procedures.