In the morning of May 10, 2013, the 4th 2011-iChEM lecture, also named as Nanqiang Lecture was held at XMU. Mr. Guobao Zhang, the Deputy Director of the Economic of Chinese People's Political Consultation Conference and the Chairman of Expert Advisory Committee of National Energy Commission, presented an excellent talk with topic of “Issues and Development Potential of Entering the Era of Low-carbon Energy”. Prof. Ning Li, the Dean of School of Energy Research at XMU, hosted the lecture and Mr. Zhenbing Yang, the Chairman of Communist Party of China at XMU, awarded Mr. Zhang a commemorative plaque.
Mr. Zhang was former Vice-Minister of the State Development and Reform Commission and former Director of the National Energy Administration. He had been responsible for energy, industry, national economic mobilization work for 11 years, and he had also been in charge of National Energy Administration for two years since 2008. He has made outstanding contributions in promoting the reform of China's energy structure, the development of nuclear power and wind power, and major equipment localization.
Mr. Zhang said that, on one hand, the China’s energy development has been made huge progress in recent years. China has become the country with the largest installed capacity of wind power with rapid growth in the world. In 2012, the electricity fueled by non-fossil energy reached 1,070TWh, 21.4% of the total national generation. The main contributor was hydropower, which was about 800TWh, accounting for 17.4%. Wind power was indeed developing fast. Last year, the electricity fueled by wind was 100.4TWh. Though it surpassed nuclear power, it only accounted for 2% of the national total.
On the other hand, China suffers from severe surplus wind and significantly decreased utilization efficiency. This year, a long-lasting haze in many provinces and cities shocked the Chinese, which triggered a huge discussion on a transformation of China’s economic development, environmental protection, development mode and industrial structure. The mid and eastern China suffers from severe air pollution. Meanwhile, abandoning water and wind shows the problems in the country’s new energy development. The waste of clean energy shouldn’t be happening.
To solve these issues, the national energy structure has to be changed, such as, increasing the proportion of non-fossil energy, increasing nuclear power, more imports of natural gas resources, and decreasing coal production, etc. Mr. Zhang also answered questions from the students at the end.
