Wang Dapeng, Deputy Director of the New Energy and Renewable Energy Department of the China Energy Administration, pointed out at a regular press conference that in 2022, China’s renewable energy added 152 million kilowatts of installed capacity, accounting for 76.2% of China’s newly added power generation installed capacity, and has become the main body of China’s newly added power generation installed capacity; China’s wind and photovoltaic power generation has added 125 million kilowatts of installed capacity, exceeding 100 million kilowatts for three consecutive years and reaching a new historical high. Among them, wind power added 37.63 million kilowatts, solar power added 87.41 million kilowatts, biomass power added 3.34 million kilowatts, conventional hydropower added 15.07 million kilowatts, and pumped storage added 8.8 million kilowatts. As of the end of 2022, the cumulative installed capacity of renewable energy in China has reached 1.213 billion kilowatts, accounting for 47.3% of China’s total installed power generation, an increase of 2.5 percentage points from 2021. Among them, the installed capacity of wind power is 365 million kilowatts, solar power is 393 million kilowatts, biomass power is 41 million kilowatts, conventional hydropower is 368 million kilowatts, and pumped storage is 45 million kilowatts.
Wang Dapeng stated that the role of renewable energy in ensuring energy supply is becoming increasingly evident. In 2022, China’s wind and photovoltaic power generation exceeded 1 trillion kilowatt hours, reaching 1.19 trillion kilowatt hours, an increase of 207.3 billion kilowatt hours from 2021, a year-on-year increase of 21%, accounting for 13.8% of the total social electricity consumption, a year-on-year increase of 2 percentage points, close to the daily electricity consumption of urban and rural residents in China. In 2022, the renewable energy generation reached 2.7 trillion kilowatt hours, accounting for 31.6% of the total electricity consumption in society, an increase of 1.7 percentage points from 2021. With the increasingly large-scale and high proportion of renewable energy in China’s power system, the development of the new energy storage industry has accelerated, and the trend of technological diversification has become more obvious. According to Liu Yafang, Deputy Director of the Energy Conservation and Technology Equipment Department of the China Energy Administration, as of the end of 2022, the installed capacity of new energy storage projects in China has reached 8.7 million kilowatts, with an average energy storage time of about 2.1 hours, an increase of over 110% compared to the end of 2021.
As of the end of 2022, in China’s new energy storage installations, lithium-ion battery energy storage accounts for 94.5%, compressed air energy storage accounts for 2.0%, flow battery energy storage accounts for 1.6%, lead-acid (carbon) battery energy storage accounts for 1.7%, and other technological routes account for 0.2%. From the perspective of the proportion of newly installed technologies in 2022, lithium-ion battery energy storage technology accounts for 94.2%, still in an absolute dominant position. The proportion of newly added compressed air energy storage and liquid flow battery energy storage technologies reaches 3.4% and 2.3% respectively, with a significantly accelerated growth rate. In addition, various energy storage technologies such as flywheels, gravity, and sodium ions have also entered the engineering demonstration stage.
Against the above background, new progress has been made in the trading of green power certificates in China. In 2022, 20.6 million green certificates were issued throughout the year, corresponding to 20.6 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, an increase of 135% compared to 2021; The number of transactions reached 9.69 million, corresponding to 9.69 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, an increase of 15.8 times from 2021. As of the end of 2022, China has issued a total of approximately 59.54 million green certificates and a total of 10.31 million transactions, effectively promoting the green and low-carbon transformation and high-quality development of the economy and society.
Wang Dapeng revealed that, while ensuring energy security supply, in order to accelerate the construction of a new energy system and continue to promote the large-scale and high-quality leapfrog development of renewable energy, the future will focus on the following five aspects of work:
1) Around the implementation of the plan, further clarify development expectations, organize pilot demonstrations of renewable energy, and further promote innovation in wind and photovoltaic technology and development models; Timely conduct mid-term evaluations of the 14th Five Year Plan.
2) Promote the revision of the Renewable Energy Law around the new situation and requirements of renewable energy development; Further improve the renewable energy green power certificate system and establish a renewable energy electricity consumption guarantee mechanism based on green certificates.
3) Anchor carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals, and promote the implementation of renewable energy substitution actions. Accelerate the substitution of renewable energy in industries, transportation, and housing construction around clean, low-carbon, and efficient energy utilization.
4) We will vigorously promote major renewable energy projects around the construction of a new energy system. The first batch of large-scale wind and photovoltaic base projects were connected to the grid and put into operation, while the second and third batches of base projects began one after another. The construction of offshore wind power bases is steadily and orderly progressing. At the same time, we need to promote the construction of decentralized onshore wind power and distributed photovoltaic power generation projects. Organize the optimization of pumped storage layout and promote the good and fast development of pumped storage.
5) Focusing on the revolution of county-level energy production, consumption, technology, and system, we will tailor policies to local conditions and implement them in a classified manner. We will guide local governments to comprehensively launch the construction of rural energy revolution pilot counties, increase the supply of clean energy in rural areas, explore the establishment of a new rural energy system, and help promote rural revitalization comprehensively.