Author: Du Fengli, Secretary-General of the China Solar Thermal Alliance and Solar Thermal Power Committee of Chinese Renewable Energy Society.
On September 15, the International Energy Agency's SolarPACES 2026 Conference was held in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany. Approximately 400 representatives from 31 countries—including Australia, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, China, Spain, France, Greece, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Japan, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Turkey, Singapore, Mexico, the UAE, Thailand, South Korea, Portugal, Argentina, the Netherlands, South Africa, Morocco, Chile, Hungary, and India—attended the conference.
Photo: Conference venue
Du Fengli, Secretary-General of the China Solar Thermal Alliance and Solar Thermal Power Committee of Chinese Renewable Energy Society, was invited to attend the conference and delivered a keynote speech on "The Development Status of Concentrated Solar Power in China," providing a comprehensive overview of China's CSP technology, policies, market development, and international cooperation.
Photo: Secretary-General Du Fengli delivering her speech
Representatives at the conference showed great interest in—and were inspired by—China's deployment of commercial CSP projects, as well as technological advances including large-aperture molten-salt parabolic trough collectors, low-position molten-salt storage tanks, wireless heliostat control technology, and 350 MW-class large-scale CSP plants. Many attendees remarked "great presentation," and top experts from institutions such as the National Lab of the Rockies and Sandia National Laboratories requested copies of the presentation materials.
During the CSP financing session, the question raised by Secretary-General Du—"China looks forward to more CSP projects worldwide, so why has the commercial development of CSP been relatively slow outside China?"—sparked a lively discussion.
Bingsheng Chemical / Qinghai Salt Lake Industry Co., Ltd. , a director-level member of the CSTA, served as a Gold Sponsor of this year's conference, while Cosin Solar Technology Co., Ltd. exhibited at the event.
Photo: Dr. Alina Gilmanova, postdoctoral researcher (now completed) at the Solar Thermal Utilization Research Group of the Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, delivering the opening remarks as a representative of Women+ in CSP
SolarPACES is an Implementing Agreement of the International Energy Agency in the field of concentrating solar thermal technology, with 19 member countries. On March 1, 2011, after three years of application and upon obtaining bilateral approval from both the IEA and China's Ministry of Science and Technology, the Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences—founding member and chairing unit of the CSTA—formally joined the organization as China's contracting party. This marked China's 13th IEA Implementing Agreement, following those on clean coal, fluidized bed combustion, multiphase flow science, photovoltaic power generation, hydropower, wind energy, buildings and communities energy conservation, energy storage conservation, advanced motor fuels, advanced materials for transportation, fusion reactor technology, and fusion materials.
Dr. Wang Zhifeng, a researcher at the Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and chairman of the CSTA, currently serves as Vice-Chair of SolarPACES.