The party's 20th National Congress report proposes actively yet prudently promoting“Peak carbon and carbon neutrality”, taking into account China's energy and resource endowments, sticking to the principle of“First doing something, then breaking it down”, implementing the carbon peak action in planned and step-by-step steps, and deepening the Energy Revolution, we will strengthen clean and efficient use of coal, accelerate planning and construction of a new energy system, and take an active part in tackling climate change in global governance.
Carbon reduction, low-carbon and carbon peak, carbon neutrality and other key words are frequently mentioned, “Dual-carbon” work has become an important part of the strategic layout of chinese-style modernization. In the new energy system, offshore wind power has the advantages of large amount of resources, high generation efficiency and low transmission cost. In 2022, coastal provinces issued plans for the development of the wind power industry, and the country's offshore wind power industry plans to add more than 80 GW of new capacity during the 14th five-year plan period.
How does wind power work?
Wind energy refers to the kinetic energy generated by air flow, is a form of solar energy conversion. Due to the uneven heating caused by solar radiation, the pressure distribution in the atmosphere is unbalanced. Under the action of the horizontal pressure gradient, the air moves along the horizontal direction to form wind. The total reserves of wind energy resources is very huge, under certain technical conditions, can be developed as an important energy use, and wind power is one of its main purposes.
“Blue China” is number one in the world
The data shows that the scale of offshore wind power installed in our country has ranked first in the world. “Competing for wind to the sea” is becoming the“Blue power” of green and low-carbon development in the eastern coastal areas.
On the eve of World Ocean Day 2022, our reporter learned from the Ministry of Natural Resources that according to the latest data from the 2021 China Marine Economic Statistics Bulletin, China is now developing marine clean energy with strong momentum, a total of 16.9 GW of offshore wind 2021 capacity was added to the grid, a year-on-year increase of 4.5 times, making it the largest in the world in cumulative capacity.
Wind power is one of the fastest-growing green energy sources. Unlike land-based wind power, offshore wind power is less constrained by land use and noise pollution. In terms of resource endowment, China's economic center of gravity is in the southeast coast, while traditional energy is mainly distributed in the northwest inland.
“Competing for wind to the sea” is a major support for the rapid development of high-end marine equipment manufacturing capabilities. The 2021 Wind Farm, the first of its kind in China, has entered its energy storage delivery period, many technologies are leading in the world.
Offshore wind power will usher in a new round of rapid growth
On the demand side, with the“14th five-year plan” New Energy Storage Development Implementation Plan published earlier this year, large-scale development of offshore wind power has become a national policy, the“14th five-year plan” for offshore wind power construction, which has been rolled out by various provinces, is also“Ambitious”. Guangdong says it will have 18GW of offshore wind power installed by the end of 2025, while Jiangsu plans 28 offshore wind farms with a capacity of nearly 10GW Shandong plans to invest 5,000 MW in offshore wind power by 2025; Fujian proposes to increase the scale of offshore wind power construction to 10.3 MW; and Zhoushan, in Zhejiang province, has made clear its plan for“Provincial subsidies” for offshore wind power, provincial subsidies for offshore wind power will be 600,000 kilowatts and 1.5 million kilowatts, with subsidies of 0.03 yuan per kilowatt-hour and 0.015 yuan per kilowatt-hour, respectively.
With offshore wind power bidding repeatedly hit record highs, positive signals continue to release. According to the statistics of Polaris Wind Power Grid, in the first 8 months of this year, 42 offshore wind power projects with a total scale of 21.5 gigawatts in our country have been announced as winning the tender, the bidding scale has increased six times compared with the whole of last year, and the demand for installation is clear. In the first half of this year, due to repeated epidemics in the coastal areas and high raw material prices, offshore wind power projects started at a low rate, and it is expected that in the second half of this year, domestic offshore wind power capacity is expected to achieve a significant rebound.
Accelerating sea breezes around the globe
The combination of a global power gap and climate change, which has been particularly tense this year, has also led to a consensus on accelerating the deployment of offshore wind power.
The G8 and the EU have already announced plans to boost energy security and offshore wind cooperation, with plans to increase Baltic region offshore wind capacity from 2.8 GW to 19.6 GW by 2030. The White House has also set a target of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030.
From“Land” to“Sea”, is the trend of the times. The global offshore wind market is expanding rapidly as technology advances and costs fall, according to the forward-looking industry research institute. According to International Energy Agency statistics, offshore wind power alone is expected to meet more than 11 times the world's electricity demand by 2040. That would put the world on track to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Medium-and long-term prospects for offshore wind power
Medium-term: coastal provinces to increase the amount of sea breeze construction. Up to now, 11 provinces and cities along the coast have all put forward plans for offshore wind power development during the 14th five-year plan period. The total scale of offshore wind that has been started or planned during the 14th five-year plan period in 11 provinces and cities is close to 110 GW, the capacity of the planned wind-connected network reaches about 51 GW.
Long-term: deep-sea resources development space, reduce costs to support sustainable development. By the end of the 2021, offshore wind power accounted for less than 1 per cent of China's available resources. With the development of new technology, such as floating, the cost will be reduced to parity, and sustainable development is expected to be achieved.
