At present, China is vigorously promoting the development of distributed energy, in the background, learning from foreign experience in the development of distributed energy can contribute to the development of distributed energy in China. The paper reviews goals, practice and related policies of distributed energy development in the United States, Germany and Japan, respectively. Then the paper summarizes five enlightenments: the establishment of rules; the set of goals; the reform of power system; the establishment of grid standards; the establishment of economy prompting policies.