China News Service, July 27th: How to take the road of green transformation?
Liu Shijin: Correctly handle the relationship between stock and increment
China-Singapore Finance reporter Xia Bin
Setting the "dual carbon" goal, China is moving towards a green transition of economy and energy. How should this road be taken?
On the 27th, the second "Intelligent China-Europe Beijing Forum" hosted by China Europe International Business School and specially supported by the Energy Foundation was held in Beijing. Liu Shijin, deputy director of the Economic Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and vice chairman of the China Development Research Foundation, attended the forum. It is said that the discussion of the above problems can be approached from an angle, that is, to correctly handle the relationship between stock and increment.
Liu Shijin believes that China's energy and economic transformation should and must follow a transformation path of "increment priority, new generation of old, incentives for innovation, and market-driven".
The logic of economics is that traditional high-carbon energy, as a stock, has a certain space for carbon reduction, but its potential is regressive.
On the other hand, as an incremental low-carbon or zero-carbon new energy source, with the expansion of production and technological improvement, the cost reduction will be accelerated. Although the price of green products will be higher than that of traditional products for a period of time, the green premium will gradually change from positive to positive. Negative, the carbon reduction cost advantage of replacing old energy with new energy increases, which in turn accelerates the conversion progress of the proportion of new and old energy.
"In fact, this process has already happened. We are now talking about carbon reduction. In reality, we can observe that China now has three different types of carbon reduction." Liu Shijin pointed out that the first type is recession-type carbon reduction, that is, less production or even No production, reduced emissions, or even no emissions.
The second is carbon reduction by increasing carbon productivity, by increasing carbon productivity to achieve more output with the same amount of carbon emissions, or the same output but with less carbon emissions.
"We often talk about energy conservation and emission reduction, conservation priority, etc., which are roughly equivalent to this type of carbon reduction." Liu Shijin said.
The third is innovative carbon reduction.
Liu Shijin said that this is through innovation to form new technologies, new processes, new methods, etc., to achieve low-carbon, zero-carbon or even negative carbon emissions under the condition of achieving the same output.
For example, wind, light, water, biomass and other renewable energy power generation, if such technologies are used to replace the original high-carbon technologies, carbon emissions can be reduced on the premise of achieving the same output.
In Liu Shijin's view, the start of innovative carbon reduction has led to the greening and digital transformation of economic and social development far exceeding expectations.
Decline-type and efficiency-enhancing carbon reduction mainly reflect defensive strategies, that is, to make a fuss about the main and original energy system. Carbon reduction reflects an aggressive strategy.
"Although we have had an understanding and prospect of an aggressive strategy for a long period of time, our ideas and practices are basically still in a defensive strategy. The challenge is how to shift to an aggressive strategy as soon as possible."
Liu Shijin believes that a major policy to deal with the above challenges is to shift the focus to faster expansion of increments on the premise of stabilizing the stock and ensuring the stability and security of energy supply. Carbon and carbon-negative technology products provide strong incentives.
And this incentive is an interdependent "three-pillar" system.
Specifically, the first pillar is to establish a growth-oriented carbon sink market that supports green technology innovation in an all-round way, and the market should focus on stimulating incremental technological innovation; the second pillar is to form a regional responsibility system for autonomous emission reduction; The three pillars are to accelerate the construction of green micro-basic systems focusing on carbon accounting and carbon accounts.
"These three pillars have high technical requirements and need to comply with relevant domestic and foreign rules, including complex coordination mechanisms and contractual relationships." Liu Shijin said that at present, digital technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence technology can be used to " The relevant content in the "three-pillar" system is "packaged" into a complete data operation system for actual operation.
There have been successful cases in this regard. The integration of digital technology and green development will greatly expand the application scenarios.
However, he also reminded that promoting green innovation involves both technological innovation and institutional policy innovation. Green innovation and transformation still need to "cross the river by feeling the stones" in the face of a large number of unknown and uncertain factors.
The "three-pillar" model of the aggressive carbon reduction strategy is actually a plan. It can be tried first at the provincial and municipal levels with strong innovation willingness, giving a certain space for trial and error exploration, and after successful experience is obtained, it can be improved and promoted.
Liu Shijin said that "top-level design" mainly solves two problems, one is the direction, and the other is the bottom line, but there is still a lot of room to explore in the middle.
It is necessary to mobilize the innovation and enthusiasm of local, grassroots, enterprises and individuals, and through active exploration, China will definitely be able to blaze a new path of green transformation with Chinese characteristics and leading the world trend.
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