On November 28, 2025, the China Renewable Energy Society (CRES) announced the list of winners of 2025 CRES Science and Technology Awards, including 10 first prize winners, 12 second prize winners, 13 third prize winners, 1 Science and Technology Achievement Award winner, five Science and Technology Innovation Award winners, and 10 Young Scientist Award winners.
Dr. Wang Zhifeng, researcher at the Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IEECAS) and Chairman of CRES Concentrating Solar Power Committee, won the Science and Technology Achievement Award.
Wang Zhifeng, born in October 1963, holding a PhD in Engineering Thermophysics from Tsinghua University, Researcher and PhD Supervisor at IEECAS, Chairman of China Solar Thermal Alliance (CSTA), Vice President of the IEA-SolarPACES, Chairman of CRES Concentrating Solar Power Committee, Vice Chairman of the Solar Thermal Power Generation Professional Committee of China Electrotechnical Society (CES), Vice Chairman of the National Solar Thermal Power Generation Standardization Committee, one of the first specially appointed core backbone researchers of the CAS (2015), one of the first recipients of the National “Ten Thousand Talents Program” (2014), expert receiving special allowance of the State Council, winner of the Outstanding Contribution Award for Solar Thermal Energy Utilization in China (2016). He has twice been awarded the title of CAS Excellent Doctoral Supervisor. He has published a monograph on concentrating solar power (in Chinese, English, and Arabic), titled Design of Solar Thermal Power Plants, and more than 70 papers.
He has long been committed to the modeling and optimization of concentrating solar power (CSP) systems, as well as the research on photothermal conversion equipment and thermal energy storage. He proposed that the core scientific problem of solar thermal power generation is the coupling of unsteady light-heat-work processes, presented a roadmap for the development CSP technology, and proposed the concept of the 4th-generation CSP technology. He has presided over numerous major projects financed by the 863 Program and 973 Program (both are National High-Technology R&D Programs of China), the National Key R&D Program of China, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China, achieving multiple breakthroughs. As the project leader, he has led the construction of:
Asia’s first solar tower plant (2012);
China’s first cross-seasonal solar thermal energy storage project, achieving 210-day continuous thermal energy storage across different seasons (2021);
the world’s first CSP kiln for cement and ceramics firing (2022); and
the world’s first supercritical CO2 CSP system (2024).