National Energy Administration: Adhere to Green Low Carbon

The National Energy Administration held a national energy work conference today and pointed out that at present, it is necessary to face some development contradictions in the energy sector into the new normal process, adhere to green and low carbon, and continue to increase the proportion of non-fossil energy consumption.

Bai Keli said that at present, the major contradictions faced by energy development are the following: The contradiction between overcapacity in traditional energy sources is increasing. From January to November this year, the steel and building materials industry and coal consumption decreased by 3.2% and 8.2% respectively year-on-year, and electricity consumption decreased by 6.4% and 8.4% respectively year-on-year. Coupled with the fact that our country’s “de-capacity” signal is stronger one day a day, from this perspective, coal may face long-term overcapacity. The signs of excess electricity are now more and more apparent. At the same time, the primary processing capacity of crude oil has now exceeded 700 million tons, but the utilization rate of capacity is less than 70%. The director of the National Energy Administration, Bai Keli, said that if one does not grasp this trend, one-sided pursuit of capacity expansion may cause new excess capacity in the future. At the same time, the operational efficiency of our country's energy system as a whole is also improving. At present, our country's power system mainly depends on thermal power units to adjust peaks, and it has poor access to renewable energy, and it also has a large amount of pollution emissions. At the same time, the occurrence of renewable energy resources also faces bottlenecks. At present, the abandonment of wind in the “Three North” region has abandoned the issue of abandonment of hydropower in the southwest region. In some areas, the rate of wind curtailment exceeded 30%, and at the same time the problem of abandoning light in the northwest began to appear. Bai Keli also said that at present, our country’s end-use energy consumption, the implementation of clean energy such as natural gas and electricity, and alternatives to substitute fossil fuels such as coal and oil are also arduous.

Bai Keli said that our country’s current consumption is still dominated by coal, which is determined by the characteristics of our country’s energy resources. As a whole, coal as a main energy source will not change for a long time. However, we must also realize that unreasonable and extensive use of coal is one of the main factors affecting the ecological environment. Therefore, we must implement double control over total energy consumption and consumption intensity, implement a priority strategy for energy conservation, and strictly control coal consumption. We must speed up the transformation of energy use in key areas, increase the proportion of energy consumption in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, and planning. He also said that in the future we must continue to diversify our development to promote the revolution in energy supply.