High level of consumption and utilization of renewable energy

Data from the National Energy Administration show that in 2022, China's wind power and photovoltaic power generation exceeded 1 trillion KWH for the first time, reaching 1.19 trillion KWH, an increase of 207.3 billion KWH from 2021, a year-on-year increase of 21%, accounting for 13.8% of the whole society's electricity consumption, an increase of 2 percentage points, close to the national urban and rural residents' living electricity consumption. As the proportion of new energy generation continues to increase, high-quality development needs to pay more attention to consumption.

Wang Dapeng, deputy director of the New Energy and renewable Energy Department of the National Energy Administration, said that the new situation and new requirements of the development of renewable energy will promote the revision of the renewable energy law; Further improve the renewable energy green electricity certificate system, and establish a renewable energy electricity consumption guarantee mechanism based on green certificates. Focus on the clean, low-carbon and efficient use of energy, and accelerate the replacement of renewable energy in industry, transportation and housing; We will organize and optimize the layout of pumped storage and promote the sound and rapid development of pumped storage.

In recent years, the National Energy Administration has actively promoted the trading of green power certificates and guided green power consumption, which plays an important role in the consumption of new energy. Green power certificate is the "electronic identity card" of green power produced by renewable energy power generation enterprises. Power generation enterprises obtain the environmental value of green electricity by selling green certificates, and power users prove their consumption of green electricity by buying and holding green certificates. In August 2022, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Bureau of Statistics, and the Bureau of Energy jointly issued the Notice on Further doing a good job of excluding New renewable energy consumption from Total Energy Consumption Control, clearly taking the green certificate as the basic certificate for the identification of renewable energy power consumption.

The issuance and trading of green certificates is of great significance to promote the high-quality development of renewable energy and improve the level of green electricity consumption. "At present, we are combining the new situation and new requirements, further improve the green power certificate system, clarify the authority, uniqueness, versatility and leadership of the green certificate, expand the scope of green certificate issuance, promote green certificate and green electricity trading, guide green electricity consumption, and play a greater role in promoting the development and utilization of renewable energy and promoting the whole society to better consume green electricity." Wang Dapeng revealed.

In order to achieve the goal of peak carbon neutrality, accelerating the construction of a new power system with a high proportion of renewable energy has become an important task for the development of China's energy industry. Wind power and photovoltaic power generation have intermittence, randomness and volatility, and the existing power system needs to accept and absorb large-scale and high-proportion wind power and photovoltaic power generation with strong volatility, and it is urgent to vigorously develop all kinds of energy storage to make up for the gap in the flexibility adjustment capacity of the power system.

With the gradual improvement of the policy system and the continuous optimization of the market environment, the effect of a variety of demonstrations has become prominent, and the development of new energy storage has also entered the fast lane. Liu Yafang, deputy director of the Department of Energy Conservation and Science and Technology equipment of the National Energy Administration, said that the new energy storage characteristics complement the advantages of traditional energy storage technology, so that there are more choices for the construction of new power systems. Compared with the traditional pumped storage, the new type of energy storage is flexible in site selection, short construction cycle, fast and flexible response, and diversified application scenarios, which can complement the advantages of pumped storage, and solve the problems of strong randomness and high volatility when new energy is connected to the power system in different scenarios.

Technological breakthroughs and economic improvements have further created favorable conditions for the rapid development of new energy storage. Liu Yafang introduced that in recent years, the development speed of new national energy storage technology has been continuously improved, energy density, power density and cycle life have been greatly improved, and safety prevention and control technologies and measures have been continuously improved. The energy density of lithium-ion batteries for energy storage has more than doubled compared with 10 years ago, and the power density has increased by about 50%, and a relatively complete industrial chain has been formed. Technologies such as flow batteries, sodium-ion batteries, compressed air energy storage, and flywheel energy storage are developing rapidly. Despite the rapid growth of upstream raw material prices, the cost of energy storage battery systems with lithium-ion batteries as the mainstream is still trending downward. The new energy storage industry as a whole is in the transitional stage of R & D demonstration to the initial stage of commercialization, and gradually formed an industrialization system.