On August 20, the State Grid Corporation of China commissioned the Ningxia–Hunan ±800 kV UHVDC transmission project (hereinafter referred to as the “Ningxia Power to Hunan” project). It is the first ultra-high-voltage transmission channel in China approved primarily for delivering wind and solar power from the “desert, Gobi, and wasteland” renewable energy bases, and also the third UHVDC project to be put into operation this year.
China’s energy investment is rapidly gathering momentum in the direction of “green and innovative.” Recently, a number of major projects have made solid progress, and the construction of a new-type energy system is in full swing. Industry experts believe that in the second half of the year, energy investment will continue to maintain strong momentum. While new energy and UHV projects are accelerating, sectors such as smart grids, new energy storage, and green hydrogen also hold significant growth potential.
This year’s government work report proposed to “accelerate the construction of ‘desert, Gobi and wasteland’ renewable energy bases, vigorously develop offshore wind power, and coordinate local consumption with transmission channel construction,” pointing the way forward for China’s energy development.
According to monitoring by the National Energy Administration, in the first half of this year, China’s energy infrastructure construction maintained a strong momentum. The investment completed in key energy projects under construction or planned to start within the year exceeded 1.5 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 21.6%, with new energy investment increasingly “shifting toward green and innovative” fields. Among these, investment in new energy power generation continued to grow rapidly. Onshore wind power investment in Guangxi and Xinjiang more than doubled compared with the same period last year, while investment in offshore wind power in Guangdong, Fujian, and Shanghai was released intensively. Investment in centralized photovoltaic projects grew 24.5% year-on-year, while distributed photovoltaic projects saw an increase of over 70%. Investment in solar thermal power nearly doubled from the same period last year.
“Energy investment will continue to maintain strong momentum in the second half of the year, with a focus on both ensuring energy security and advancing green, low-carbon transformation,” said Sun Chuanwang, professor at the China Energy Economics Research Center of Xiamen University, in an interview with Economic Information Daily. He noted that the construction of new energy power sources, mainly wind and photovoltaic, will continue to accelerate, while the large-scale development of green energy and the clean transformation of traditional energy will deepen in a coordinated way.
In Northwest China, the country’s first transmission project for a large “desert, Gobi and wasteland” renewable energy base—the Tianshan Beilu Gobi Energy Base in Xinjiang—is under full-scale construction and is scheduled to put all units except solar thermal into operation in December this year. In the east, China’s first competitively allocated offshore wind power project with a tariff below the coal benchmark price—the first phase of the China Three Gorges Group’s Shanghai Jinshan Offshore Wind Farm—has completed all installation hoisting, laying a solid foundation for full-capacity grid connection within the year.
For renewable energy to be delivered and efficiently utilized, the construction of energy network infrastructure must keep pace. Based on the plans of the two major power grid companies, grid investment this year is expected to hit a record high. Building ultra-high-voltage (UHV) transmission projects starting from clean energy bases in regions such as Southwest China and the “desert, Gobi and wasteland” areas is becoming an important trend.
The commissioning of one UHV project after another not only enables large-scale optimization of clean energy allocation but also strongly drives the development of upstream and downstream industries as well as investment growth.
Developing a new energy system, with energy storage and hydrogen energy playing a crucial regulatory role, is also a key component, and related investments are accelerating to be released.
According to data from the National Energy Administration, investment in key hydrogen energy projects doubled in the first half of the year, with multiple green hydrogen projects in Jilin Province progressing rapidly. Investment in charging and swapping infrastructure increased by nearly 70% year-on-year. Investment in new energy storage and integrated source–grid–load–storage projects both increased by more than 30%.
Professor Sun Chuanwang noted that since technologies such as smart grids, new energy storage, and green hydrogen can help address issues like “instability and difficulty in absorption” caused by large-scale, high-proportion integration of renewables, these sectors hold significant growth potential. He expects that in the second half of the year, steady progress will be made in the intelligent upgrading of existing power grids and in the deployment of new energy storage as peaking power sources, while the construction of cross-regional transmission channels such as UHV projects will continue to be scaled up.