Abstract: Planning is the base of rural energy construction .The paper reviewed the development of methodologies of rural energy planning. Before 1980’s,qualitative analysis was the main method. From the end of 1970’s to early 1980’s,the methods of system engineering such as linear program were employed in rural energy planning, the mathematics model was formed to look for optimal objective. During the periods of “sixthfive years planning”and “seventhfive years planning”, by taking the county as one unit the integrated rural energy developing projects were carried out at 18 counties in China and they were successful. As a result， the integrated rural energy planning (IREP) was presented. IREP aimed to the balance of supply and demand of energy. The main characteristics of IREP are: economic assessment is used to the basis projects selection; energy conservation is considered as energy resources to increase supply;energy supply is the least cost;and qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis are combined.Since 1990’s,the situation of rural energy development has changed. According to the situation of market economy which is going to be built and the requirement of sustainable development strategy, the paper presented the methodology of the integrated rural energy planning which considered the interaction of energy supply, economy development and environment effect． Furthermore， the paper gave a improving IREP method． The improving IREP introduces comprehensive assessment of scenario by using the indexes of energy, economy and environment． The methodology has been applied in the 100 counties program during “ninthfive years planning”.