The Basic Science Center for Energy and Climate Change (CECC) is a non-entity virtual research institution established in early 2025, based on the Excellent Research Group Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (formerly the Basic Science Center Project) entitled “Research on Energy Economics and Climate Policy”. It is jointly established by the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at Beijing Institute of Technology (CEEP-BIT), the Institute for the Environment and Health at Nanjing University, and the Center for Power and Energy System Transition at Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

The CECC aims to address national strategic needs and frontier scientific questions in the fields of energy transition and climate governance. It seeks to uncover the intrinsic interactions and mechanisms of the energy-economy-climate system, identify the key leverage points for cross-system coordinated regulation, advance system coupling modeling methods and optimization algorithms, and design energy transition pathways and climate governance mechanisms that are economically optimal, incentive-compatible, and secure and controllable. The CECC focuses on several research directions, including energy economy and security, energy supply transition, regional and sectoral reduction path, climate and environmental risk, and global climate policy design. Ultimately, the CECC strives to contribute a Chinese approach to global climate governance and to support national decision-making on energy and climate issues.