Dr. Yongping Zhai has been working on energy development in Asia and Africa for more than thirty years. He is currently chief of the energy sector group at the Asian Development Bank (ADB), in charge of overall energy policy coordination and technical support to ADB energy sector operations. He is also in charge of developing energy sector knowledge work for ADB and interacts with worldwide energy sector partners.

Prior to his current position, Dr. Yongping Zhai was director of the South Asia Energy Division (2010-2015) at ADB, covering energy sector operations in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. In this capacity, he led ADB’s support to renewable energy, energy efficiency, and power trade in South Asia. He also served as ADB’s lead energy specialist (2008-2010), in charge of energy sector in Southeast Asia including Indonesia, Philippines, and the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS). In particular, he was instrumental in leading ADB’s support to the power sector’s successful restructuring process in the Philippines. Moreover, Dr. Zhai has played a key role in promoting power trade and cooperation in GMS.

From 1993 to 2000, Dr. Zhai was a principal program coordinator/public utilities economist at the African Development Bank, in charge of energy projects in the Southern African Development Community. Between 1990 and 1993, he served as an assistant professor at the energy technology division (Energy Policy and Planning) at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Bangkok, Thailand. He graduated from the Thermal Energy Engineering Department, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China (1983) and received a Ph.D in energy economics from the Institute of Energy Economics and Policy, affiliated with the University of PierreMendès France in Grenoble, France (1989).