Building a green and low-carbon energy system to achieve energy security and sustainable development

Since 2021, a variety of factors have led to a global energy supply shortage and a sharp rise in prices, which soon evolved into an "energy crisis" mainly manifested by soaring energy prices and violent market turbulence.

In contrast to the 1973 and 1979 energy crises, oil is no longer the main character of the crisis - electricity, coal and gas have become the new focus. The report of the Party's 20th National Congress pointed out that it is necessary to "further promote the energy revolution and accelerate the planning and construction of a new energy system", which provides a fundamental guideline for ensuring national energy security and promoting economic and social development in the new era.

At present, the global energy model is accelerating change, energy security may face more complex challenges. China has built the world's largest clean power generation system, with non-fossil energy sources accounting for more than 50% of the installed power capacity. In the future, it is foreseeable that the installed scale of renewable energy will continue to grow rapidly, gradually complete the deep transformation of the energy system, and ultimately achieve the goal of "carbon neutrality". In this process, there are several issues to be concerned about. On the one hand, the supply chain security of new energy remains an important challenge. In particular, the security supply of key minerals (lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, rare earths, natural uranium, etc.) and key factors (chips, software, core components, etc.) is becoming more and more prominent. On the other hand, large-scale energy storage has not yet made breakthrough progress at this stage. With clean energy such as wind, light and water becoming the main energy to support the energy system, in many areas, coal power units will undertake the work of deep peak load, which challenges power generation efficiency and unit life. In addition, ensuring energy security should not only be able to cope with supply disruptions and large price fluctuations, but also be able to cope with extreme weather, major accidents, cyber attacks and other risk events.

In the process of achieving green and low-carbon energy transformation and building a new energy system, the following three aspects should be grasped.

First, we must grasp the inevitability of development.

The large-scale, high-proportion, high-quality sustainable development of new energy is an inevitable trend, and the green and low-carbon transformation of energy will ultimately make our energy more secure and sustainable. At the same time, rich coal, poor oil and less gas is the basic national conditions of our country, coal-based energy structure is difficult to change fundamentally in the short term, thermal power in the future for a long period of time is still the main energy supply. This year's government work report pointed out that "promote the green transformation of development mode", "promote the clean and efficient use of energy and technology research and development, and accelerate the construction of a new energy system." In the future, the combination of clean and efficient coal and renewable energy to achieve multi-energy complementarity can better accelerate the construction of new energy systems and jointly safeguard energy security.

Second, give full play to the traction of technology.

The road to carbon neutrality is necessarily a road to technological change, a road to technological breakthroughs. To build a new energy system, "scientific and technological innovation" is the first driving force to play a leading and supporting role. We should attach importance to the fundamental role of science and technology. On the one hand, it is necessary to actively conduct investigation and research in the field of energy, and the government, enterprises and universities actively go to the front line, society and rural areas to find problems as the starting point, and establish the value fulcrum of cutting-edge science and technology on the basis of industrial development and the actual needs of public life. On the other hand, we should focus on the application, innovation and breakthrough of key core technologies, which relates to whether China can firmly hold the initiative of energy security in our hands. The popularization of intelligent technology will refresh all aspects of social industry. At present, digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data analysis, and cloud computing have been widely used in the energy sector to inject momentum into energy transformation. As the large model "high-end" and "extremely low-cost" artificial intelligence technology, a new round of scientific and technological revolution has entered a new stage of competition, and the integration of the energy industry and intelligent technology needs to be deeper and more powerful. At the same time, energy storage technology is also the highland of global science and technology competition, in order to deal with the instability and impact of scenery projects, accelerate the solution of energy storage technology, especially large-scale and super-large-scale energy storage problems, is the key to the new energy system.