Shi Xunpeng and Yang Muyi: Energy Transition Is a Systematic Project, Only When the Transition Is Steady Will the Price of Coal Remain Stable

Release time:2020-12-17Author: Shi Xunpeng and Yang Muyi

It is China's unswerving national policy to promote energy transformation and realize low-carbon economic development. At the 75th Session of the United Nations General Assembly held in September this year, the Chinese government made a solemn commitment to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. The "14th Five-Year Plan" also takes the gradual realization of carbon neutrality as the goal to steadily advance. However, energy transformation is a systematic project, which not only includes the low-carbon transformation of the energy system itself, but also is closely related to the economic restructuring. At present, China's economic development is still highly dependent on energy consumption. In the case that the capacity of production of low-carbon energy such as renewable energy can not be rapidly improved, excessively rapid reduction of coal supply will lead to an imbalance between supply and demand in the coal market and endanger economic growth and the improvement of people's living standards. Therefore, energy transformation must be established on the premise of fully meeting the energy demands of economic development, and can not hinder economic development for the sake of transformation. The government needs to use effective policies to promote the energy transformation. For example, the government can use market-oriented means to take the production capacity as a license, and through the trading mechanism, promote the effective exit of coal production capacity and avoid the fluctuation of coal prices.