In the morning of January 5, the National Energy Administration held a press conference in Beijing to release The 13th Five-Year Plan for Energy Development and The 13th Five-Year Plan for Renewable Energy Development and answered questions of the press.
Below is a transcript of the press conference.
Liang Changxin, Spokesperson of the National Energy Administration:
Good morning, friends from the press. I am Liang Changxin, spokesperson for the National Energy Administration and head of Division of Legal and System Reform. Adopted by the National Energy Commission and approved by the State Council, The 13th Five-Year Plan for Energy Development is jointly printed, issued and implemented by the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration. Today, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration officially release The 13th Five-Year Plan for Energy Development and the facilitating 13th Five-Year Plan for Renewable Energy Development. To help better understand the content of both plans, we have invited to the press conference Li Yangzhe, deputy director of the National Energy Administration, who will introduce and interpret these two plans, and Li Fulong and He Yongjian, deputy directors of Division of Development and Planning, Zhu Ming, head of Division of New Energy, and Liang Zhipeng, deputy director of Division of New Energy to answer your questions. Now I’ll leave the stage to Mr. Li Yangzhe, for him to brief you on the overall situation of The 13th Five-Year Plan for Energy Development and The 13th Five-Year Plan for Renewable Energy Development.
Li Yangzhe:
Friends from the press, good morning! Reviewed and adopted by the National Energy Administration and approved by the State Council, The 13th Five-Year Plan for Energy Development had been officially published before the New Year, by the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration, with 14 more plans on specific subjects including electrical power, renewable energy and others on the way. First of all, I would like to talk about The 13th Five-Year Plan for Energy Development (the Plan).
Compiled in accordance with the The 13th Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development of the People’s Republic of China which is reviewed and adopted at the fourth session of the 12th National People’s Congress, the Plan has confirmed the guidance, basic principles, development goals, policies directions and key tasks for energy development in our country, and it is the overall blueprint and action guidelines for China’s energy development for the duration of the 13th Five-Year Plan.
According to the Plan, we should implement the five development ideals, spontaneously adapt to, grasp and lead the New Normal, follow the strategy of “four revolutions and one cooperation” in energy development. Constantly take the advancing of structural reforms in the supply side of energy as the main focus, the needs from economic and social development and people’s livelihood as the foothold, and improving the quality and benefits of energy development as the core. Make efforts in optimizing the energy system, making up for the weak points in development, grooming new technologies, industries, business and models, uplifting the overall service level in the energy sector, so as to push forward on a full scale the revolutions taking place in energy production and consumption, and strive to build a modern energy system that’s clean, low carbon use, safe and efficient.
The Plan emphasizes that we should adhere to the policy direction of “Six ‘Care-More-Abouts’”: care more about development quality by adjusting inventory, optimizing incrementation and actively dissolving excess capacity; care more about structural adjustment by pushing forward green and low carbon development in energy; care more about optimizing the system by actively building a smart energy system; care more about market rules by actively reforming the supply and demanding mode of energy; care more about economic benefits by enhancing the competitiveness of energy and relevant industries; and care more about mechanism innovation by promoting fair competition in the market. The Plan has not only summarized the previous experience and achievement in energy development and revolution, but also made specific deployment and arrangement in energy revolutions and green, low carbon development over the next five years. The Plan is for transitional revolution and innovative development. Now, I will talk about the considerations and arrangement of energy planning on several important issues in six aspects.
First, on the total amount and intensity of energy consumption. Achieving a dual control on the total amount and intensity of energy consumption is a great strategy put forward at the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party and a key task in pushing forward the building of an ecological civilization. After comprehensively considering factors like the economic and social development stage and the change of energy consumption’s trend, fully proving and broadly soliciting public opinions, the Plan puts forward that the total amount of energy consumption should be kept within the equivalent of 5 billion tons of standard coal by 2020, which is consistent with the The 13th Five-Year Plan of National Economic and Social Development of the People’s Republic of China. Judging from the annual growth rate, during the period of the 13th Five-Year Plan, the total amount of energy consumption will maintain an annual growth rate of around 2.5%, which is 1.1 % lower than during the period of the 12th Five-Year Plan, in consistency with the new trend of energy consumption in the New Normal. Seen from the energy intensity, if estimate based on the goal of the Plan, the unit GDP energy consumption will drop by no less than 15% during the period of the 13th Five-Year Plan, able to meet the constraint requirements of the 13th Five-Year Plan. To ensure energy security and deal with the possible faster recovery of energy demand and supply tension in some areas, the Plan has considered relevant solutions, offering some flexibility for ensuring energy security, mainly by improving the utilization rates of current generator units, uplifting trans-regional deployment and transportation, and coordinating mutual assistance for ensuring supply and other measures, to ensure sufficient and stable energy supply.
Second, on the adjustment of energy structure. It is an essential requirement for pushing forward energy revolution and an urgent need for enabling the transitional development of our country’s economy and society, to optimize energy structure and realize clean and low carbon development. The Plan points out that during the period of the 13th Five-Year Plan, the non-fossil energy consumption ratio should be increased to over 15%, with the natural gas consumption ration expected to reach 10% and the coal lowered to less than 58%. Estimated from the relevant indexes of the Plan, the increment of the non-fossil energy and natural gas consumption will be three times that of the coal increment, accounting for more than 68% of the increment in the total amount of energy consumption. We can say that clean and low carbon energy will become the main constituent of the increment of energy supply during the period of 13th Five-Year Plan.
The goal of structural adjustment laid out by the Plan has its realistic foundation as well as raises certain difficulties and challenges. We should implement the work in three aspects. First, we should continue to push forward the scale development of non-fossil energy. We should well carry out the work on the scale, layout, connection between channels and markets, plan and build a batch of major hydropower and nuclear power projects, develop with a stable pace the renewable energy like wind power and solar power. Second, we should expand the consumption market of natural gas. We should innovate the mechanisms and systems, steadily push forward the equal accessibility of the accepting, storing and transportation facilities of natural gas, encourage direct supply to the customers, lower the cost of utilizing natural gas, strive to develop distributed energy sources and the natural gas peak-shaving power plants, actively push forward the replacement of coal and oil with natural gas in civilian, industrial and transportation sectors and raise the ratio of natural gas consumption. Third, we should improve our work in fossil energy, especially the very promising area of clean and efficient utilization of coal. In a rather long period from now on, coal will remain the major energy of our country, for it is one of the most basic national conditions. We should unswervingly develop the washing and processing of coal and the coal-fired power with super low emission, push forward the upgrading demonstration of coal-made oil, gas and alkene, so as to take on a road of clean coal development and utilization that is right for China. Meanwhile, we should accelerate the quality upgrading of the finished oil, promote the use of clean oil products like biomass fuels, and improve the cleanliness in oil consumption.
Third, on the layout for the energy development. Constrained by factors like resource endowment, most of the important energy bases of our country are located in the northwest region, thus giving rise to an energy layout and flow of “west-east power transmission program,” “west-east gas transmission program” and “north-south coal transportation program.” However, after the economy entered the era of New Normal, the major energy consumption areas witnessed a shrunken market, generally lowering the activeness in receiving energy from other regions and thus resulting in the deepening conflicts of interest between energy-sending and energy-receiving regions. Based on the new situation, through a comprehensive consideration of the factors like resource and environment constraints, the generation and absorption of renewable energy and the cost of energy circulation, the Plan has made a coordinated arrangement on the key energy projects and energy channels during the period of the 13th Five-Year Plan. Among such arrangements, some adjustments have been made on the layout for energy development, mainly to shift the wind power and photovoltaic power layout to the eastern and central regions. The central and eastern regions account for about 58% of the new wind power installation and about 56% of the new solar power installation, mainly focused on the distributed development and local consumption. Meanwhile, transmission channels have been significantly reduced compared with those in the preliminary phase of the plan research. We also spontaneously slow down the pace to build coal-fired power and rigidly control the scale of coal-fire power. In implementing the Plan, we will closely follow the changes and the effects of the layout and the adjusting measures, dynamically evaluate new changes, analyze new problems, and research to adopt new solutions.
Fourth, on improving the efficiency and development quality of the energy system. At present, as there is a phasic loose in energy supply, problems like unbalanced, uncoordinated, and inefficient energy development began to emerge, which are mainly manifested in lowering hours of coal-fired power utilization, disharmony between the systematic adjusting abilities and the development of renewable energy. Solving these problems will be a long-term task, and the main solution is to optimize the energy system. For this purpose, the Plan has put forward solutions in four aspects: First, we should effectively dissolve the excess capacity. The deployment by the State Council aimed at dissolving excess coal capacity should be adequately put in place. It needs to be emphasized that in dissolving excess capacity, we should rely on means of market and rule of laws, care more about employing standards in safety, environmental protection, technology, quality and others to eliminate outdated capacity. Second, we should quicken the improvement of the weak links in energy development. We should enhance the peak-shaving ability of the power system, accelerate the construction of the pumped storage power stations and natural gas peak-shaving power stations. Meanwhile, we should enhance the transformation in the current heat and power co-generator units and coal-fired generator units. We should coordinate in pushing forward the construction of oil and gas pipes and networks, to enhance the sub-pipeline and sub-networks construction to get through the “one last kilometer” while enhancing the transmission through key networks and improving importing and accepting abilities. We should both remedy our backwardness and catch up with the latest development in pushing forward the building of power distribution networks in urban areas by accelerating the intelligentization while perfecting the networks. Third, further push forward the transformation of super low emission of coal-fired power and energy conservation. During the period of the 13th Five-Year Plan, we need to complete the transformation of 420 GW of coal-fired generator units for super-low emission and 340 GW for energy conservation. Fourth, we should rigorously control the new coal-fired power installations and strive to contain the coal-fired power installations within 1.1 TW.
Fifth, on improving the guarantee ability of energy security strategy. The Plan emphasizes on firmly establishing the bottom-line, relying on domestic resources and enhancing the independent guaranteeing abilities for energy, and takes into consideration to make full use of international energy and resources by catching the opportunity of loose supplies of the international market. In enhancing the domestic supply ability, the Plan puts forward that we need to consolidate the supply foundations of oil and gas and make efforts in improving two guaranteeing abilities: First, we should exploring and developing to a greater extent regions like Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Erdos Basin, strengthen the unconventional and offshore oil and gas resource development, to improve the sustaining and guarantee ability in resources. Second, we should orderly push forward the construction of the demonstration projects of making oil and gas from coal, and promote the biomass liquid fuels to enhance the strategic replacement and guaranteeing abilities. In utilizing the international resources and market, the Plan puts forward that we should catch the great opportunity of the Belt and Road Initiative, push forward the interconnectivity of energy infrastructures, strengthen cooperation in technical equipment and capacity, actively engage in the global energy governance, and achieve the energy security under the condition of opening-up. Meanwhile, during the period of the 13th Five-Year Plan, we should stick to the principle of “conservation first,” make efforts to push forward the reduction and replacement of oil consumption in relevant sectors, give emphasis to raising the economic standards of the vehicle fuels, and vigorously promote the new energy vehicles and the replacement of oil with electricity and gas in harbors and airports.
Sixth, on making efforts to enhance the leading role of innovation. Innovation is the best impetus that leads the energy development. The Plan emphasizes that we should quicken the innovation in areas of technologies, mechanisms and systems, and industry models, to further enhance the vigor of energy industries. For innovations on technologies, the Plan adheres to the strategic direction, following the philosophy of “applying a batch, demonstrating a batch and tackling a batch” and quickening the R&D and demonstration of technical equipment in key sectors. For innovations on mechanisms and systems, the Plan focuses more on giving play to the decisive role of market in allocating resources and argues that we need to perfect the modern energy market, push forward the equal accessibility of and connection to infrastructures like the power grid and the oil and gas pipelines and networks, and orderly open competitive businesses in exploration and development of oil and gas, to improve the efficiency of resource allocations. Meanwhile, the Plan also considers giving full play to the government’s role to scientifically and reasonably build, manage and regulate the market and improve its governance ability in energy industry. For innovations on industrial models, the Plan points out that we should actively promote the contract energy management, integral energy service and other advanced market ideals and models, push forward the deep convergence between information technologies and energy industries, strengthen the mutual response between the supply and demand sides of energy, so as to build a smart energy system of production, transportation, utilization and storage of energy featuring coordinated development and integral complementarity.
The Plan has depicted a blueprint for energy development during the period of the 13th Five-Year Plan and has confirmed the development goals, the key tasks and the measures. For the next step, we will focus on the implementation of the Plan. We also hope that the whole society, especially friends from the media, will continue to care and support the energy development. Let us join hands in striving to push forward the energy revolution and building a modern energy system that’s clean, low carbon use, safe and efficient.
Now I will gave you a brief introduction to the 13th Five-Year Plan for Renewable Energy Development.
Renewable energy is the main constituent of China’s non-fossil energy and also an important foundation for China's future energy transformation. Taking achieving the ratio goal of the non-fossil energy by 2020 as the core and solving the major problems confronting the current renewable energy development as the direction, The 13th Five-Year Plan for Renewable Energy Development has confirmed the development goals, the overall layout, the major tasks and the guaranteeing measures of renewable energy during the period of the 13th Five-Year Plan. Plans for renewable energy in the 13th Five-Year Plan include the general plan, The 13th Five-Year Plan for Renewable Energy and five sub-plans on specific subjects including hydro power, wind power, solar power, biomass power and geothermal power, representing almost half of the 14 energy sub-plans in the 13th Five-Year Plan. Especially, the geothermal energy development plan was compiled for the first time, which fully manifests the general trend of China’s energy transition and the Chinese government’s firm determination in implementing an energy development route that’s clean and low carbon use. I will now explain in particular the major features of The 13th Five-Year Plan for Renewable Energy (the Plan).
First, adherence to the objective orientation. The technologies of renewable energy are various and quite different in their respective development status. The Plan puts forward that by 2020, the country should achieve the development goal of over 380 GW in hydro power installation (among which 40 GW come from pumped storage power stations), over 201 GW in wind power installation, 110 GW in solar power installation, 15 GW in biomass power installation and an equivalent of 42 million tons of standard coal in geothermal heat supply. Such a goal was confirmed closely according to the goal of 15% of non-fossil energy in the total amount of primary energy consumption, through a comprehensive consideration of various factors like the resource potential of various non-fossil energies, the status of major projects’ primary preparation, the improvement of economic indexes and undergoing rigorous calculations. Combining all the goals above, by 2020, the annual utilization of commercialized renewable energy is expected to reach the equivalent of 580 million tons of standard coal. Also, added with nuclear power, it is very probable that the development goal of 15% non-fossil energy should be achieved, which would lay a solid foundation for realizing the goal of non-fossil energy accounting for the one-time energy consumption by 2030.
Breaking down such a general goal to each year of the Plan, during the period of the 13th Five-Year Plan, China’s renewable energy power installation will achieve an annual growth of 42.5 GW, including about 8 GW of conventional hydro power (excluding pumped storage power), about 3.5 GW of pumped storage power, more than 16 GW of wind power, more than 12 GW of photovoltaic power, about 1 GW of solar power, around 2 GW of biomass power, accounting for about half of the annual power installation during the period of the 13th Five-Year Plan. Besides, it will witness an annual growth of 72 million square meters in the utilization scale of solar power heaters, of an equivalent of 71 million tons of standard coal in heat from geothermal power, of an equivalent of 600,000 tons of standard coal in biomass liquid fuels. From these numbers we can see that the renewable energy will generally see a fast development and become a major part of China's energy and power increment during the period of the 13th Five-Year Plan.
According to preliminary calculation, during the whole period of the 13th Five-Year Plan, the renewable energy will reach RMB 2.5 trillion in investment. By the end of the Plan, the annual utilization amount of renewable energy will be the equivalent to an emission reduction of 1.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide, 10 million tons of sulfur dioxide, about 4.3 million tons of nitric oxide, about 5.8 million tons of dust, an annual conservation of about 3.8 billion cubic meters of water and creates more than 13 million jobs, bringing forth outstanding economic, environmental and social benefits.
Second, the 13th Five-Year Plan for renewable energy demonstrates the problem-solving direction. After so many years of development, the renewable energy has made internationally known achievements as well as encountered increasingly prominent problems and challenges. Therefore, in compiling the Plan, we have also come up with some new ideas of the development stages and the problems of various renewable energy. For hydro power, besides continuously focusing on the major rivers in southwestern regions, actively and orderly pushing forward the building of large hydro power foundations, and reasonably optimizing the development in medium and small water basins, the Plan also observe that we should have coordinated planning and reasonable layout, accelerate the building of pumped storage power stations, so as to meet the needs of peak-shaving and valley-filling by the power system and the requirements for safe and stable operation. During the period of the 13th Five-Year Plan, China will have about 60 GW of new pumped storage power installation. Through an improved management mechanism, the regions will greatly improve the adjusting function of their power grid, further promoting the consumption of the new energy power.
Wind power has demonstrated the optimization in layout and the requirements for consumption. The wind power projects will further be shifting to the areas able to consume and utilize. Explicit requirements to solve the wind power consumption problems have been raised to some areas with relatively more severe issues in terms of abandoning wind power and rationing power. The focus of solar energy power is mainly reflected in enhancing distributed utilization and promoting technical advancement, especially actively encouraging the cities with a sound basis in industry and commerce to promote the distributed photovoltaic projects on building rooftops. As for the large photovoltaic power station projects in the western regions, the Plan explicitly requires orderly building to be carried out on the basis of solving the problem of abandoning photovoltaic power. Meanwhile, attempts should be made to help the market better allocate resources in order to carry out the Photovoltaic Pacemaker Plan and promote the advanced photovoltaic technologies and the application of relevant products.
During the period of the 13th Five-Year Plan, we should adhere to the distributed development of biomass energy, so as to strive for a situation where collection of raw materials, processing, conversing and consumption are all locally done and to greatly push forward the demonstration of bio natural gas industrialization and the heat supply by biomass-formed fuels.
The Plan explicitly puts forward that we should enhance the geothermal exploitation and utilization on the basis of carrying out resource prospection. We should also enhance the connection between the geothermal power and the general urban planning, integrate electric heating into the urban infrastructure construction, and provide support in terms of land, power consumption and fiscal and taxation prices, so as to fully promote the reasonable and effective utilization of geothermal power.
Third, strive to innovate the management and application mechanisms. At present, renewable energy has become a vital part of newly added power sources. In merging into the energy system process, we must tackle the constraints from mechanisms and systems faced with the renewable energy. Meanwhile, we should unleash the potential of renewable energy in actual application. Therefore, the Plan has raised several crucial demonstrations in the innovation of mechanism and integral application.
First, we should promote mechanism innovation. The first thing to do is to build a goal-oriented management system in developing and utilizing renewable energy, mainly by assigning responsibilities in developing clean energy to government at all levels and major energy enterprises, and to build an index-oriented energy development review system based on the renewable energy utilization. The second thing to do is to follow the requirements of Renewable Energy Law of People’s Republic of China, to implement the full-amount guaranteeing procurement system for power from renewable energy and to encourage renewable energy to engage in the market competition after completing the lowest guaranteeing procurement hours. The third thing is to build a transaction mechanism of green certificates for the renewable energy to compensate the environmental and social benefits of the new energy power generation through the market, thus reducing the demand of the new energy on subsidy from central finance.
Second, in order to lead, we should always practice what we preach. We should actively carry out the demonstration projects in compliance with the reform policies. Firstly, we should carry out the demonstration of application of the renewable energy and quicken solar energy, biomass energy, geothermal energy, and clean electric heat. The second is to carry out regional energy transformation demonstrations by promoting innovation on multiple levels like the technical integration, application ways and mechanisms and systems of new energy and building a team of demonstration provinces and cities in energy transformation and demonstration counties in rural energy transformation, demonstration areas in high-ratio renewable energy. The third is to carry out the application demonstration of micro power grid of new energy and explore new business models and industry types of power energy service. Moreover, the Plan also puts forward the tasks in the application demonstrations of ocean energy and energy storage and other new technologies, which have laid a solid foundation for the acceleration of the renewable energy’s utilization and the replacement of the fossil energy consumption.
Third, we should actively promote the renewable energy-powered heat supply. Not long ago, President Xi Jinping put forward that we should strive to push forward heat supply by clean energy in the northern regions. The heat utilization from renewable energy is a vital part of a clean heat supply. According to the Plan, we should follow the principle of “prioritizing utilization, economic effectiveness, multiple complementarity and integral assembly” to carry out scale application demonstration of heat supply by renewable energy, quicken the promotion of solar power’s utilization and biomass power. It is primarily estimated that by 2020, heat supply and civilian fuels from various renewable energy will sum up to the equivalent of 150 million tons of standard coal.
Fourth, we should strive to improve the economic efficiency and competiveness of renewable energy. In recent years, China has made apparent progress in renewable technologies, significantly dropping the cost. However, from a global perspective, the renewable energy cannot survive without subsidies in the near future. However, in recent days, the bidding prices of wind power and photovoltaic power projects have been lower than the local price of fossil energy power generation, showing certain market competiveness, especially the distributed photovoltaic projects by the users whose prices are now relatively close with the on-sale price from the power grid. The bidding price of the “Photovoltaic Pacemaker” demonstration project is far less than what was anticipated, which shows the huge potential of the technical innovation and advancement in renewable energy. Therefore, the Plan puts forward the following goal, “by 2020, the wind power projects should be able to compete with the local coal-fired power while the photovoltaic project’s electricity price should be equal to the on-sale price from the power grid.” It is a signal to the industry that technical innovation and advancement must be further used to lower the cost and free the industry from reliance on policy subsidies. Based on the feedback from some advanced enterprises in the industry, it is estimated that by 2020, through the concerted efforts of the whole society, should the consumption and absorption issues be effectively addressed, realizing the goal of connecting the wind power and photovoltaic power with the same price of grid power to the grid will be achievable.
Above is the main content and features of The 13th Five-Year Plan for Energy Development and The 13th Five-Year Plan for Renewable Energy Development. Thank you.
