Energy emerging technologies and industry trends

Iterative innovation of energy technology has promoted the transformation and development of the global energy industry. As the world's largest developing country, the most populous country and the second largest economy, my country is also the largest energy producer and consumer. The healthy development of the energy industry is closely related to the sustainable development of my country's resources, environment and socio-economic development. At present, although my country's energy industry has made remarkable achievements, it is also facing prominent problems:

① The total energy consumption is huge, and the energy production and consumption structure is still dominated by fossil energy. In 2018, my country's total coal consumption was about 2.74 billion tce, an increase of 1.0% year-on-year, accounting for 59.0% of the total energy consumption, but the proportion continued to decline. The power generation of renewable energy and nuclear power continued to grow, but the scale level was still insufficient.

② The oil and gas security supply situation is grim. In 2017, my country became the world's largest crude oil importer for the first time. In 2018, China's dependence on foreign oil was 72% and its dependence on foreign natural gas was 43%.

③ Fossil energy has not yet been utilized in a high-quality manner, especially the clean and efficient utilization of coal still needs to be greatly improved. The proportion of coal used for power generation is far lower than that of developed countries, and the ecological and environmental problems caused by large-scale coal development and utilization are more prominent.

④ The overall efficiency of the energy system is still low. my country's energy consumption per unit of GDP is 1.4 times the world average. In 2018, the average number of hours of thermal power utilization was only 4,361 hours, and the amount of electricity "abandoned" (abandoned wind, abandoned solar, and abandoned hydro) was 102.3 billion kW·h.

⑤ The pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and respond to climate change is enormous. my country's CO2 emissions account for about 30% of the world's total, and its CH4 emissions also rank first in the world.

While ensuring national energy security, protecting the ecological environment and effectively responding to climate change will be major long-term issues facing my country's energy development. With the future economic and social development, the demand for energy resources from traditional industrial upgrading and infrastructure construction will remain strong. my country's total energy consumption may continue to rise, and the new energy demand will be concentrated in emerging industries related to renewable energy, natural gas, nuclear energy, etc. The development of emerging industries in the energy field is closely related to national strategic needs, which will help promote the revolution in energy production and consumption, optimize the energy structure, help energy security, achieve greenhouse gas emission reduction and ecological environment protection, and at the same time improve the national industrial equipment manufacturing technology level, cultivate new momentum for economic development, and serve the sustainable development of the economy and society.

The next 10 to 15 years and longer will be a critical period for my country to accelerate the cultivation and development of strategic emerging industries, as well as an important opportunity period for the development of green and low-carbon industries. Promoting the development of new energy technology emerging industries has become an inevitable choice that meets my country's development needs and resource characteristics. Existing research has explored topics such as the overall development laws of my country's strategic emerging industries, the development trends and path selection of new energy industries or a certain energy segment, and policy regulations for strategic emerging industries, and has completed in-depth analysis in terms of regional industrial clusters, strategic layout, innovation characteristics, and development models. However, there is still a lack of relevant content on the future development of emerging industries in my country's energy field, especially the strategic level research on industry positioning, development paths, and specific measures.

Based on the definition of the characteristics and industrial connotation of my country's new energy technologies, this article sorts out the changing trends and development situations of the global competition landscape of new energy technologies and emerging industries, and studies the development direction of my country's new energy technologies and emerging industries towards 2035, especially the development goals and key tasks during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period; clarifies the specific development direction of technological innovation, and puts forward suggestions on engineering science and technology key projects, major projects and demonstration area construction, and related policies.

Characteristics and industrial connotations of new energy technologies

1. Characteristics of new energy technologies

New energy technologies have common characteristics: ① Solve the restrictive problems of the development of the technical field through innovation in technical principles; ② Have excellent technical competitiveness or technical advantages; ③ Take relevant mature technologies as the development basis and have good technical feasibility; ④ Have great cost reduction potential, can combine with high technology learning rate, and rapidly expand the scale of technology development while making the cost drop sharply, so as to have the ability to compete with traditional technologies and occupy a large market share. Based on the definition of existing research, this article further defines new energy technologies as: not only involving renewable energy and nuclear energy, but also covering unconventional oil and gas resource development, clean and efficient conversion and utilization of traditional fossil energy, energy transmission and terminal energy use, etc., which are breakthrough or subversive energy development and utilization technologies.

(II) Scope and positioning of emerging energy new technology industries

As an emerging industry, the positioning of the new energy technology industry needs to accurately reflect the objective laws of energy development, meet the major national needs of "promoting the revolution in energy production and consumption, and building a clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient energy system", and fully reflect the new trends, new vitality and new formats of the energy industry, and effectively promote green and low-carbon to become a new driving force for economic growth. The "Decision of the State Council on Accelerating the Cultivation and Development of Strategic Emerging Industries" divides strategic emerging industries into seven major categories, among which the main ones involving the energy field are "new energy industry" and "energy-saving and environmental protection industry", among which "energy-saving and environmental protection industry" only involves efficient energy saving in the traditional industrial utilization process. The "13th Five-Year Plan for the Development of National Strategic Emerging Industries" collectively refers to new energy industry, energy-saving and environmental protection industry and new energy automobile industry as "green and low-carbon industry". Therefore, emerging industries in the energy field were previously mainly referred to as "new energy industry".

Energy itself does not involve new energy or old energy, but there are differences in the degree of advancement of energy technology. The term "new energy industry" alone cannot directly reflect industries such as smart grids, energy storage, distributed energy and microgrids. At the same time, the development of the renewable energy industry also needs to pay attention to the advancement of technology. The positioning of the "new energy industry" focuses on industries such as nuclear energy, solar energy, wind energy and biomass energy, which easily ignores the subversive role of new fossil energy technologies (such as shale oil and gas large-scale development technology, advanced clean coal technology), and excludes the systematic combination and coordinated development of new fossil energy and non-fossil energy technologies. Policy documents of some government departments such as the National Energy Administration include shale gas development and smart grids in strategic emerging industries, but the specific scope of emerging industries in the energy field is still unclear. The positioning of the "new energy industry" is too narrow, and the statistical scope cannot fully reflect the energy transformation and industrial changes brought about by the development of new energy technologies. The limitations of the existing industrial division and positioning have, to a certain extent, hindered the integrated innovation of new energy technologies and the coordinated development of different energy industries, which is not conducive to the comprehensive promotion of the energy production and consumption revolution.

In view of this, this article proposes to expand the scope and connotation of the previous "new energy industry", attach equal importance to the clean and efficient use of fossil energy and the large-scale development of nuclear energy and renewable energy, and collectively refer to the emerging industries in the energy field as "new energy technology industries". New energy technologies associated with the development of emerging industries include energy-saving and energy efficiency technologies, new technologies for the clean and efficient development and utilization of fossil energy, smart grid and energy storage technologies, large-scale development and utilization technologies for unconventional oil and gas resources and renewable energy, independently innovative nuclear power technologies and nuclear waste treatment technologies, as well as related cutting-edge technologies such as hydrogen energy and fuel cells, nuclear fusion energy, hot dry rocks, and natural gas hydrates.