Security is the premise of any transaction.
The core strategy of China's future energy strategy system is to ensure national energy security, and in the process of promoting energy transition and building a new energy system, it is necessary to strengthen energy security and effectively achieve energy independence, controllability and reliability.
1. Objective and rational understanding of energy security
As we all know, energy is strategic, is the foundation of national economic and social development and stability, energy security involves the most important things, especially related to economic security, social stability and people's livelihood security.
For developing countries with huge economies and populations in the world, China really needs to have an objective and rational understanding of the national energy security situation.
(1) Fossil energy resources are obviously insufficient
For a long time, there has been a view in China's energy circles that China's fossil energy resources are characterized by "rich coal, lack of oil, and low gas", but the above argument is appropriate to a certain extent, but it should perhaps be changed, or at least adjusted or updated.
There is no doubt that fossil energy is still the dominant energy source in terms of the global primary energy consumption structure, especially for China, where fossil energy is still dominant.
Coal resources are relatively abundant
In terms of coal resources, China's "coal-rich" argument may have some merit, as domestic coal is currently self-sufficient, at least not as overly dependent on foreign imports as oil and gas are.
However, I think the above view seems to be a bit reluctant, and "rich coal" is only a relative concept, because although China's coal reserves are relatively large, due to the size of the Chinese population, the per capita proven coal reserves are only 70% of the world average.
In addition, from the perspective of China's coal reserve-production ratio, taking 2021 data as an example, coal production is about 4.1 billion tons, and the reserve-production ratio is about 29 years, which does not seem to be very optimistic.
Petroleum resources are severely scarce
From the perspective of resources, China's petroleum resources are very limited, with about 3.6 billion tons of technically exploitable resources, and the per capita technical recoverable amount of petroleum is only 17% of the world average, which is obviously low.
Taking 2021 data as an example, China's oil production is about 200 million tons, and the reserve-production ratio is about 18 years, which shows that the potential for reserve resource development is very small, and it is also facing huge pressure to stabilize domestic production.
From the perspective of oil consumption demand, China is currently the world's largest oil consumer, with an annual consumption scale of more than 700 million tons, which needs to be imported from abroad in large quantities, and its dependence on foreign countries is as high as 72% in 2021.
Natural gas resources have limited potential
From the perspective of resources, China's natural gas resource potential is also very limited, and the amount of technology that can be developed is even lower, which is currently about 63 trillion cubic meters, per capita technical recoverability is only 7% of the world average, the proportion is too low.
From the perspective of the reserve-production ratio, China's natural gas production in 2021 will be 205.3 billion cubic meters, and the reserve-production ratio will be about 30 years, which shows that the potential of existing natural gas reserve resources is also obviously insufficient.
From the perspective of natural gas consumption demand, China's current natural gas consumption scale continues to increase rapidly, with an annual consumption scale of more than 300 billion cubic meters, which is roughly equivalent to the scale of natural gas consumption in the European Union, and also needs to be imported in large quantities from the international market, and its dependence on foreign countries has reached 45% in 2021.
From the above analysis, it can be seen that China, as a major global energy producer and energy consumer, has very limited potential for fossil energy resources, especially oil and gas resources, very fragile self-sufficiency, high dependence on foreign imports, and excessive dependence on foreign countries, which poses the most direct and realistic threat to national energy security.
(2) Complex and volatile global geopolitics affect China's oil and gas import security
For a long time, China's domestic oil and gas production and production capacity is limited, and it has to rely heavily on imports to meet the domestic market demand, and its dependence on foreign imports is too large, which directly affects national energy security.
In the past few decades, global geopolitical events have occurred frequently, triggering violent fluctuations in the global energy market, resulting in continuous imbalances in the relationship between oil and gas supply and demand, resulting in violent fluctuations in oil and gas, and crises occurring from time to time.
In the case of high oil and gas**, the cost of China's oil and gas imports is indeed very high, and it needs to spend more foreign exchange to meet the needs of the domestic market, which in turn affects the balance of payments.
In addition, China's oil and gas imports mainly come from the Middle East and North Africa and other regions, and the transportation channels are relatively simple, requiring maritime transportation channels such as the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Malacca at the intersection of the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, and the South China Sea.
The above-mentioned complex factors are intertwined, mutually influential, and mutually impacting, which has a potentially huge impact on China's national energy security and brings major challenges to China's economic development.
In the extremely complex and volatile international environment, especially considering the complex domestic energy transition needs, China's requirements for national energy security are more stringent, and it is objectively necessary to establish a new concept of energy security.
(3) Renewable energy resources have huge potential
In any country, energy development is actually inseparable from the issue of energy resource endowment.
Energy resource endowment, not only fossil energy resources, for China, in the future, more attention and attention should be paid to non-fossil energy resources, and the attention should be more than fossil energy resources.
For the current stage, China should re-correctly understand the energy resource endowment, which is a crucial thinking factor for a correct understanding of the basic national conditions of energy, and is also the basic requirement to ensure long-term national energy security in the future, and it is also the starting point for the country to formulate and improve future energy development and transformation strategies or policies.
From the perspective of future energy development trends, China's traditional "rich coal, lack of oil, and low gas" statement or understanding may become more and more outdated, and the understanding of energy resource endowment may no longer keep up with the future energy development situation.
At present, on a global scale, the proportion of non-fossil energy in primary energy is increasing, and the proportion of non-fossil energy in China's primary energy consumption structure is also increasing steadily and rapidly.
In this case, if the above-mentioned fossil energy resource endowment is still overemphasized, it may be outdated and not very logical.
From the perspective of renewable energy resources, China has a vast geographical area, a variety of non-fossil energy resources have huge potential, development potential is also very huge, wind energy, solar energy, hydro energy, biomass energy, geothermal energy and marine energy and other resources are very rich, and not controlled by people, is to make up our minds to vigorously develop, I believe that China has the ability to achieve energy independence, energy security issues can be solved by vigorously developing non-fossil energy and energy transition.
According to the literature, China's technologically exploitable wind energy resources are about 3.5 billion kilowatts, and the technologically developable solar photovoltaic resources are about 2.2 billion kilowatts.
China has abundant solar and onshore wind energy resources, and the current utilization rate is only %, which is expected to meet the needs of economic development after scientific development and utilization.
In addition to wind and solar energy, China also has huge hydro, ocean, biomass and geothermal energy resources, and from the perspective of resource potential, it is entirely possible to gradually develop renewable energy and realize its energy subjectivity.
(4) Energy transition and energy supply guarantee are superimposed
At present, the impact of global climate change is becoming increasingly obvious, and extreme weather is frequent around the world, resulting in power tensions in many countries around the world, and the deepening of energy shortages in individual countries.
For a long time, China's energy consumption has been dominated by fossil fuels, especially coal.
Taking 2021 as an example, the proportion of fossil energy in China's energy consumption structure is still as high as more than 80%, of which the proportion of coal remains high, and the downward trend is very slow.
However, China has put forward the "dual carbon" goal, and it needs to accelerate the pace of energy transition and structural adjustment, which is the biggest energy problem facing China at present, and it is also a development trend that is difficult to reverse.
In order to achieve the "dual carbon" goal, China urgently needs to make a major adjustment to its energy development strategy, formulate an energy development path as soon as possible, accelerate the change of the development path with coal as the main body, and steadily promote the pace of coal rollout, which is often referred to as the process of de-coalization.
However, at the same time, the decline in the proportion of coal in China or the withdrawal of the dominant position has a direct impact on the energy security situation, especially the stability of the power system, and promotes the complexity of the power system.
For example, in 2021, due to China's implementation of coal control policies and measures, there will be a shortage of coal, resulting in high coal prices, which in turn will lead to a serious squeeze on the profits of coal power generation enterprises, and the initiative and enthusiasm of power production will be blocked.
For another example, in 2022, due to the impact of factors such as extreme heat and dry weather in summer, the hydropower output of some traditional hydropower generation areas will be greatly reduced compared with normal years, and the photovoltaic power generation will also decline significantly year-on-year.
From the above analysis, it can be seen that there is an objective contradiction between energy transition and energy security, and it is necessary for the state to coordinate and correctly handle the interrelationship between the two.
It is foreseeable that in the future, under the premise of ensuring national energy security, China will actively promote the energy transition, on the one hand, it needs to accelerate the speed of non-fossil energy "establishment", on the other hand, it must also promote the process of fossil energy "breaking", gradually replace fossil energy with non-fossil energy, and finally establish a new energy system with non-fossil energy as the main body.
2. Adjust the thinking of energy security
For energy supply security, China should have a new strategic thinking, especially bold and innovative thinking and judgment, and should not be limited to traditional security concepts.
From the perspective of the general trend of future energy transition, China should expand the connotation of energy security, give full play to the important role of coal in ensuring energy security, let renewable energy play an important role in energy security as soon as possible, and accelerate the transition from energy supply-side security to energy demand-side security.
(1) Expand the connotation of energy security
Since the 60s of the 20th century, climate, ecology and environmental problems have become increasingly serious on a global scale, especially in recent decades, the problem of responding to global climate change has become more prominent.
Through scientific research and demonstration, climate and ecological environment security are inseparable from the energy structure, and climate change, ecological imbalance and environmental pollution are directly related to the coal-based energy structure and extensive energy consumption mode.
Since 2006, China has been the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, and in the future, it will face huge challenges in reducing pollution and carbon emissions and adjusting the energy structure, and hard work will be required.
At present, China has put forward the "dual carbon" goal, and is in the stage of high-quality national economic and social development, requiring energy development to also achieve high-quality development, especially the need to accelerate the energy transition, and objectively need to establish the concept of energy security under carbon constraints.
The basic direction of China's energy development and transformation is to promote the high-speed, healthy, reliable, optimized and sustainable development of renewable energy while making efficient and clean use of fossil energy.
It can be said that the above basic directions will affect the timely realization of China's "dual carbon" goals, and lead China's economic and social development and energy structure to transform to low-carbon and green development.
Facing the future, China's energy security concept must take into account climate, ecology and environment factors, that is, climate, ecological and environmental security should become an important part of overall energy security.
The connotation of China's energy security needs to be expanded, and it is necessary to increase climate, ecology and environmental factors, promote the coordinated development of national economic development and climate, ecology and environment, and achieve coordinated development of economy and climate, ecology and environment.
(2) Give full play to the role of coal in ensuring energy security
For a long period of time in the past, once China talked about energy security, it often immediately thought of oil and gas, especially the problem of oil and gas dependence on foreign countries, such as excessive dependence on oil and gas imports.
However, in my opinion, China should attach great importance to the security status of coal in the transition period of energy transition for a long time to come, and cannot ignore the role of coal as a ballast and stabilizer of energy security.
China's long-term coal-based energy structure determines that the coal "card" must be played well, and how to play the coal "card" well will be a key link in the future, which is related to how to promote energy transition and ensure energy security.
Taking 2021 data as an example, China's coal-fired power capacity accounts for about half of the total installed capacity, but the proportion of power generation is about 60% of the country's power generation, which belongs to the "ballast stone" and "stabilizer" of national energy security.
As China accelerates its energy transition, it must maintain the bottom line of energy security and continue to play the role of coal as a fundamental guarantee for a long time to come.
Promote the transformation of coal into a strategic resource
The global geopolitical situation is becoming increasingly complex and changeable, energy supply and demand continue to fluctuate, and energy energy fluctuates, which directly affects China's energy security situation.
In such a complex international environment, in the process of promoting energy transition, China has stepped up the exploration of coal resources to ensure the stability and reliability of coal reserve resources, and to ensure that there are enough coal resources to be mined under abnormal circumstances.
China needs to use coal as an important strategic reserve resource, including production capacity reserves and physical reserves, which can be released at critical moments, so as to effectively "have food at home and no panic", thereby improving the resilience and resilience of energy security.
Promote the efficient and clean utilization of coal
Faced with the dual pressure of emission reduction and supply assurance, China needs to escort the development of the new energy power generation industry through clean and efficient use of coal power resources, and gradually realize the transformation of the main power generation.
In the transition period of energy transition, China must strengthen carbon dioxide emission reduction, accelerate the transformation and upgrading of coal-fired power units, step by step to promote the process of phasing out outdated coal-fired power capacity, continue to promote coal-fired power energy conservation and emission reduction, and use carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technologies to gradually achieve clean and low-carbon, provide technical support for achieving net-zero carbon emissions from coal-fired power, and ensure that the national "dual carbon" goal is achieved as scheduled.
Promote the transformation of coal-fired power to regulated power sources
Coal power and new energy power generation not only have a mutually substitution relationship, but also need to be developed in harmony with each other, and play a key role in ensuring safety and promoting transformation.
In the short to medium term, China should continue to optimize the distribution of coal power, gradually shift from the eastern and central parts of the country to the western and northern regions, promote the optimal combination of coal power and new energy, and promote the peak of coal power capacity and power generation before 2030.
From the perspective of future trends, China's coal-fired power needs to adjust its functional positioning, shift from the main power supply to the regulatory and guaranteed power supply, promote the flexible transformation of coal-fired power units, give full play to the flexible adjustment function, provide important support for the consumption of new energy power generation, and ensure power under extreme conditions**.
(3) Accelerate the pace of renewable energy undertaking the important task of energy security
There is no doubt that the renewable energy industry will be China's "sunrise industry" in the future, but the key is to achieve large-scale development, and the focus needs to balance its long-term upside with short-term economic shortcomings.
China's comprehensive and sustainable economic and social development in the future is the fundamental driving force for the rapid growth of renewable energy, and it is also an objective need to achieve the country's long-term development in the future and ensure energy security.
Huge potential resources and constantly improving technologies are the basic driving forces to promote the rapid development of China's renewable energy industry in the future and gradually realize the status of scale or main energy source.
In terms of economics, the much-criticized cost problem has been largely eliminated, and the cost of solar and wind power has dropped dozens of times in the last two decades, and there is no competitive disadvantage compared with traditional fossil fuels.
It is foreseeable that the development of renewable energy will be in a pivotal position in the future to build a new energy security concept in China, and it can also be said that it is a key element of China's future energy security.
Once upon a time, China's energy community has been not optimistic about the development of renewable energy, and even believed that the development of renewable energy may be "insignificant" for China's energy development.
However, today, China's energy industry has changed its understanding of the future development of renewable energy from "insignificant" to "significant", and the development potential has been fully recognized.
If there are still those who believe that renewable energy will still be a "small fight" and that it is still unlikely to form a big "climate", then it can be said that this understanding is very outdated, or rather, it is certainly out of date.
Of course, the obvious disadvantages inherent in renewables, such as intermittent or unstable, can be gradually addressed through technologies such as energy storage and peak shaving.
It must be realized that fossil energy, especially oil and gas resources, is affected by international geopolitics, while the development and utilization of renewable energy resources are basically not affected by the international environment, and can be basically controlled and safe in China.
It is foreseeable that with the increase in the proportion of renewable energy in China, the national energy security situation will gradually change, and China's energy will achieve basic independence, playing a pivotal role in national economic security.
At present, China's energy situation has changed, has entered the stage of diversification of energy development, non-fossil energy needs to quickly achieve large-scale development, the key work should be to do a good job in the coordination and complementarity between fossil energy and non-fossil energy, at the same time need to accelerate the construction of energy reserve system, and strengthen international energy cooperation.
To solve the problem of China's energy security, the key is to find sufficient clean alternative energy, accelerate the transition from dependence on fossil energy, and build a new energy system, and vigorously develop non-fossil energy is the basic path.
(4) Accelerate the safe transfer from the energy supply side to the energy demand side.
For a long time, the key to China's energy security concept is the security of energy supply and demand, the core idea is that once the energy can not meet the demand for energy consumption, it is energy insecurity, on the contrary, if the energy can ensure the demand for energy consumption, it is energy security.
The scarcity of energy resources inevitably leads to limited energy supply
For a long time, the key to China's energy security concept is the security of energy supply and demand, the core idea is that once the energy can not meet the demand for energy consumption, it is energy insecurity, on the contrary, if the energy can ensure the demand for energy consumption, it is energy security.
In the past, China's energy security concept overemphasized energy and ensured energy demand, which objectively promoted the development of the energy industry to be too extensive, but based on the scarcity of energy resources, it will inevitably lead to limited energy supply.
On the energy supply side, China needs to change the extensive supply model in the past, and meet the reasonable demand for energy consumption with the scientific and high-quality development of the energy industry, rather than improving the energy supply capacity in order to meet the "unlimited" demand for energy.
Human desires and greed are inevitably tending to have unlimited energy demand
There is always a contradiction between the earth's resources and human greed.
Due to the long-term concept of energy security, China has not adopted policies and measures in line with its national conditions on the energy demand side in the past, resulting in an increasing demand for energy consumption, which is an objective fact.
In the long run, the goal of China's energy policy is to meet the rapidly growing energy demand by continuously improving its energy supply capacity, but the energy supply is certainly limited, and the energy consumption demand may be unlimited, and if the consumption demand is left unchecked, any energy policy will encounter challenges.
China must realize that energy resources are very limited, resulting in limited supply capacity, and people's demand for energy consumption is unlimited, and it is not in line with basic logical thinking to meet unlimited demand with limited supply.
Energy security can only be ensured if demand is suppressed
According to the law of economic and social development, the demand for energy consumption must be different in different modes of economic growth, and there are huge differences in the demand for energy consumption in different economic structures.
For energy security, whether it is a rigid shortage of energy or a flexible shortage needs to be objectively understood and recognized, for example, the coal shortage that has occurred many times in recent years is a problem caused by national policies, rather than a safety problem caused by the shortage of coal resources.
Energy consumption demand should include reasonable demand and unreasonable demand, for the reasonable demand part should be guaranteed supply, and for the unreasonable consumption part, it should be suppressed or controlled to avoid energy waste or energy inefficiency.
China's energy efficiency efforts have not kept up with the trend of the times, and the overall energy efficiency is low, even less than the global average energy efficiency level, and the gap is huge compared with developed countries.
In terms of energy efficiency, China has long attached great importance to the development of energy quantity, but has not paid attention to the quality of energy development or energy efficiency, which objectively leads to a serious lag in China's energy efficiency improvement, which does not match the status of the world's energy consumer and the rapid development of the overall economic strength.
In terms of energy intensity, China has been at a high level for a long time, far higher than the international average, indicating that China's energy consumption has been too costly in the course of rapid economic development.
In the past decade, as China has begun to implement high-quality development and emphasize the comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable development of the national economy, the growth momentum of energy consumption has been curbed to a certain extent, and energy efficiency has begun to gradually improve.
However, until now, China's energy efficiency is still lower than the world average, and the gap is even greater than that of the world's developed countries, which shows that China's energy efficiency improvement potential is huge, and there is a long way to go in the future.
In my opinion, China's future energy security concept should be to ensure the reasonable energy demand of national economic development with scientific and high-quality energy supply, curb the unreasonable demand for energy or avoid energy waste and improve energy efficiency under the premise of meeting the reasonable energy demand.
3. Attach great importance to the security of energy-related critical mineral resources
According to the International Energy Agency's (IEA) Critical Minerals Market Review 2023 report, the continuous expansion of new energy sources in recent years has greatly boosted the global demand for critical minerals.
Between 2017 and 2022, the market for critical mineral resources needed for clean energy technologies such as electric vehicles, wind and solar power doubled to $320 billion.
In the past five years, global demand for lithium has doubled, cobalt demand has increased by 70% and nickel by 40%, which is much faster than people think.
The rapid growth in demand for the above-mentioned critical mineral resources is mainly due to the rapid development of electric vehicles, with global electric vehicle sales exceeding 10 million units in 2021 and a 60% increase in 2022.
In addition, with the acceleration of the global energy transition, in order to solve problems such as the instability of new energy, the global energy storage industry for power generation has developed more rapidly, and the energy storage capacity has grown faster, and the global energy storage capacity has doubled in 2022.
Countries around the world have long protected critical mineral resources that are critical to the development of the energy economy and military capabilities**, such as the United States and the European Union, which have included about 50 metal elements and minerals in their protection.
Western countries continue to introduce corresponding policies, the European Union has introduced battery regulation and critical raw materials law, the United States has introduced the Inflation Reduction Act, Australia and Canada have formulated critical minerals strategies, etc.
At present, China is a major producer of 20 key raw materials in the world, such as China, which accounts for 84% of the world's rare earth element dysprosium mining and 100% of refined products.
Although cobalt and nickel are mined in very small quantities in China, they are the largest producers of refined products from these two metals.
In addition, Chinese companies have been investing heavily in cobalt and nickel mines in countries such as Congo and Indonesia.
It is foreseeable that in view of the global energy transition, new energy will continue to develop rapidly, and the "scramble" for critical minerals will intensify on a global scale.