At global climate talks in Paris in December 2015, China committed to a number of targets to further curb emissions and reduce energy intensity. Meeting these targets depends on technology choices and behavioral responses by consumers and firms across the economy, and also on the design of government policies. How these choices and responses are likely to evolve with rising disposable income is a source of considerable uncertainty in future projections of energy use and GHG emissions. Future energy demand in China is highly uncertain given rapidly evolving factors such as economic development and reforms, demographic change, urbanization and environmental policy. In the China Energy and Climate Project within the Joint Program, researchers are working to understand and model the Chinese energy system, including the role of these rapidly evolving factors, and its response to energy and environmental policy. Extending an existing cooperative research agreement focused on the structure and dynamics of energy demand in China, this project will investigate micro-level phenomena and trends in China’s energy and economic system, which are essential to improving the realism of modeling activities. These studies will examine usage trends in China’s iron and steel and cement industries; road transportation, especially the dynamics of freight utilization; and household energy use and dynamics, linking to the impacts of changing land use including suburbanization.