By Li Wei, DRC

2018-10-26

The report of the 19th CPC National Congress has noted that China’s economy has shifted from rapid growth to high-quality development. Work needs to be done to emphasize the reform of the system for developing an ecological civilization and building a beautiful China, and to promote a revolution in energy production and consumption so as to realize green development. This paper touches upon the following issues on high-quality energy development.

I. We need to have a clear understanding of the connotations of high-quality energy development. The report of the 19th CPC National Congress has stressed out that work should be done to pursue supply-side structural reform as our main task, and strive for better quality, higher efficiency, and more robust drivers of economic growth through reform. Energy is regarded as the “blood of industry” and it is the basic factor and industry for social and economic development; besides, it is also playing the key role in ecological environment. Thus, the high-quality development of energy is indispensable in realizing the high-quality development of the society and economy. It is held that the high-quality energy development should at least contain the following three aspects: first, the ultimate goal of the high-quality energy development is to meet the needs of the people for a better life; second, the core connotation of the high-quality energy development is to foster a modern energy system which is clean and low-carbon, economical and efficient, safe and reliable. To satisfy the people’s needs for a better life and to do well in planning the development of energy economy, work needs to be done in breaking down traditional models, promoting the overall upgrading of energy industry and cultivating an energy system that is featured with high-quality development. The high-quality energy system needs to bear the following three characters: first, it should be clean and low-carbon; second, it should be economical and efficient; third, the prerequisite for high-quality energy development is to enhance the establishment of a modern governance system through deepening reform.

II. We need to take a firm stance to push ahead with high-quality energy development. At present, global energy-related technology is undergoing rapid development and people are having an ever-growing demand for a better life. These changes have offered the impetus and technical feasibility to realize high-quality energy development. Currently, efforts need to be made in the following five aspects to enhance the development. First, we need to stick to promoting energy conservation and improving the efficiency of energy utilization. Second, we need to remain committed to the reform of institutional mechanism and strengthen infrastructure construction to promote the development of natural gas industry. Third, we need to flesh out the distributed and centralized models for comprehensive energy utilization. Fourth, we need to push ahead with the utilization of ground heating energy with swift development. Fifth, we need to make positive headway in international energy cooperation and seek to establish a new international energy governance system. To this end, we need to fulfill the following tasks. We need to participate in the cooperation and reform of current international energy governance institutions in wider areas; we need to explore possible ways for establishing a new mechanism to support and coordinate global energy and climate governance under the framework of G20; we need to make vigorous efforts in strengthening the in-depth energy cooperation between China and countries along the belt and road routes.

III. We need to cultivate a model for the high-quality energy development across the country. The local conditions, development levels and relevant factors for high-quality development are different from place to place in China, and correspondingly, the pertinent problems in various places for promoting the high-quality energy development are also different. Therefore, to push forward the high-quality energy development, we need to encourage some localities to lead the way and explore new paths in the pursuit of cultivating high-quality energy development models for other places to follow. In this connection, we need to make efforts in the following aspects. We could cultivate high-quality energy development models with higher standards in Xiongan New Area, Hebei province and some other areas with adequate conditions. First, work needs to be done to comprehensively establish an energy supply system which is featured with the “four synergies” based on energy internet (the four synergies include multi energy synergy, the coordinated development of power generation, transmission, loading and storage, the balanced development between centralized and distributed models, and the concerted arrangement between construction, operation and maintenance management); second, efforts need to be made to realize the coordination between energy system and social and economic system with the goal of ecological circle construction; third, the future idea should be given the leading role in the establishment of a digital virtual world for energy big data cloud platform. In addition, work needs to be done to lead the way of the progress of the four-in-one strategy with the aim of pushing ahead with energy high-quality development attentively especially through promoting the rule of law, giving bigger role to the market, strengthening government supervision and the guiding role of related policies. We need to accelerate the market-based reform; the energy administrative management and supervision arrangement need to be innovated and special attention needs to be paid to establishing a government administration and supervision center; the guiding role of fiscal, taxation and financial policies need to be brought into full play.

The year of 2018 marks the 40th anniversary of China’s reform and opening-up program. We have reached a new historical point for further advance and we should make concerted efforts in the common cause and reach consensus in the implementation of Xi Jinping’s Thought on Building Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era, and work consistently to enhance energy transformation in line with the goal of high-quality energy development so as to realize the strategic goals of energy revolution including energy supply revolution, energy consumption revolution, energy technology revolution, the revolution of coal management system and the enhancement of cooperation between energy sectors.