Great efforts have been made in China to reduce coal consumption over the last decade. However, the energy transition to more sustainable energy systems will be gradual and take a longer time than expected. This paper discusses how sustainable development of energy systems on the local level can be gradually achieved. A challenge will be to develop smaller scale projects on the local level where participatory planning processes with cross sectoral planning can be implemented. Another challenge is to bring transdisciplinary academic research closer to the practice@en