The Paper reporter Yang Yang
Renewable energy shortages of hundreds of billions of yuan have been resolved.
Operators of new energy power plants are expected to receive long-arrears of subsidies, reduce cash flow pressure, and travel lightly in the era of renewable energy parity.
A document issued by China Southern Power Grid Corporation recently obtained by The Paper shows that in accordance with the "National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Finance, State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council on Authorizing the Establishment of Beijing and Guangzhou Renewable Energy Development and Settlement Service Co., Ltd. to solve the problem of renewable energy power generation subsidies as a whole. The Reply Letter of the Company, and after research, it was decided to establish Guangzhou Renewable Energy Development and Settlement Service Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Guangzhou Renewable Energy Company).
The document shows that Guangzhou Renewable Energy Company is a special purpose company authorized by the government and led by China Southern Power Grid Corporation to undertake the management of renewable energy subsidy funds and operate according to the market.
On the basis of fiscal appropriation, the subsidy fund gap is solved through special financing in accordance with the market-oriented principle, and the principal and interest of the special financing are listed in the budget of the renewable energy development fund.
The company is isolated from the power transmission and distribution business of the power grid, and does not affect the normal production, operation and financial status of the power grid company.
One of its main responsibilities is to be responsible for the daily management of special financing for subsidized capital gaps, including negotiation and drafting of financing contracts with financial institutions, bond issuance, payment at maturity, information disclosure, and credit rating.
The operating period is until "the subsidy gap is cleared and all the principal and interest of the special financing are repaid".
In addition, according to the "Southern Energy Observation" magazine, which is in charge of China Southern Network Corporation, Beijing and Guangzhou Renewable Energy Development and Settlement Service Co., Ltd. will complete the registration before the end of August 2022. The People's Bank of China and other relevant ministries and commissions will encourage commercial banks at the policy level to give support.
The problem of subsidy arrears did not happen overnight.
To solve the "old chronic disease", there is finally a specific implementation subject.
The huge subsidy gap and long distribution cycle are the "unbearable weight" that has plagued the renewable energy industry for many years.
Different institutions have calculated this. A common view is that by the end of 2021, the accumulated subsidy arrears will reach about 400 billion yuan, especially for wind power and photovoltaic projects.
This led to a series of chain reactions: the accounts receivable of most new energy companies continued to increase, and the operating cash flow continued to be tight.
Some private enterprises have even experienced cash flow depletion. In recent years, they have accelerated the sell-off of wind and photovoltaic power station assets to survive.
The subsidy gap is related to the development and further investment of renewable energy companies.
Since the beginning of this year, under the promotion of the high-level, the solution of the problem of underpayment has frequently shown positive signals.
Strange circle: Subsidy arrears are increasing, where does the huge gap come from?
Subsidizing wind power, photovoltaics and other renewable energy sources to accelerate their commercialization and maturity is an industrial support policy implemented and proven effective in many countries around the world.
Under the guidance of the electricity price subsidy policy, the development of my country's renewable energy industry has attracted worldwide attention, and the installed capacity has ranked first in the world for many consecutive years.
In the past ten years, the cost of domestic onshore wind power and photovoltaic power generation has dropped by about 30% and 75% respectively, and the industrial competitiveness has continued to improve.
Subsidies provide strong support for the rapid development of renewable energy. However, due to insufficient sources of subsidy funds and irrational investment by some companies or regions in the early stage of industry development, the gap in subsidy funds is getting bigger and bigger, and the long-term arrears of subsidies have burdened the industry. Forward.
According to the relevant provisions of the "Renewable Energy Law", my country has implemented a subsidy policy based on a fixed electricity price for renewable energy power generation since 2006.
Although the additional levy standard of renewable energy electricity price has been adjusted many times, from 0.1 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2006 to 1.9 cents in 2015, an increase of 19 times, but the gap between revenue and expenditure is still difficult to fill, and the income is not enough.
In August 2019, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress launched a renewable energy law enforcement inspection, and the inspection team went to 6 provinces (autonomous regions) including Hebei, Jilin, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Xinjiang to carry out law enforcement inspections, and commissioned Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, The standing committees of the people's congresses of 12 provinces (autonomous regions) including Zhejiang and Shandong inspected the implementation of the Renewable Energy Law within their respective administrative regions.
According to the report of the inspection team, the current subsidy policy for renewable energy power generation is far from meeting the needs of renewable energy development.
"At present, the total amount collected can only meet the subsidy needs of grid-connected projects before the end of 2015. During the '13th Five-Year' period, more than 90% of the new renewable energy power generation projects have not yet been implemented."
The reasons for the gap of subsidy funds and the continuous expansion come from many aspects: firstly, after 2016, the electricity price surcharge collection standards were not adjusted in time, and the shortage of funding sources led to the gradual expansion of the gap; secondly, the electricity price surcharge was not strictly collected in accordance with the law. - In 2018, the average additional levy rate of renewable energy electricity price was only 84.4%. There are widespread problems in various places, such as levying only on industrial and commercial users of public power grids, but not levied for a long time or less levied on users of self-provided power plants and local power grids; third, some Local scale management is out of control, and the installed capacity in this region has far exceeded the number determined by the national plan.
With the rapid increase in the installed capacity of wind and solar energy, the source of subsidy funds is lower than the plan, and the expenditure is far more than expected.
In addition, there are deeper reasons behind the subsidy funding gap, that is, the price adjustment lags behind the cost reduction rate, which makes the price and cost seriously deviate, and stimulates some places to ignore the reality and blindly approve, rush to install, and rush to the Internet. Prominent, resulting in disorderly development of the industry, excessive investment.
Huge subsidy arrears make the subsidy model unsustainable.
On June 1, 2018, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance and the National Energy Administration announced the most stringent new photovoltaic policy in history, marked by "limiting scale, reducing electricity prices, and reducing subsidies".
According to The Paper, the continuous expansion of the renewable energy subsidy gap is one of the main reasons for the competent authorities to seek industrial policy changes.
At the same time, as wind power and photovoltaics have fully entered the era of grid parity, the national policy has begun to "close up" subsidies and no longer subsidize new projects. Once the existing projects reach the "reasonable utilization hours of the whole life cycle" or the grid connection reaches 20 Years, and no longer enjoy the central financial subsidy funds.
The scale of subsidies for existing projects is basically determined, which is the basis for completely solving the problem of insufficient subsidy.
Start the most stringent "subsidy verification" in history, and speed up the settlement of underpayments
Over the years, in the face of serious subsidy arrears, some people have pinned their hopes on continuing to increase the power surcharge standard, and some people have proposed to issue special national debt.
In October 2019, the Ministry of Finance rejected the feasibility of the above-mentioned idea in the "Reply to Recommendation No. 9258 of the Second Session of the Thirteenth National People's Congress".
According to the Ministry of Finance, special treasury bonds are guaranteed by national credit, are generally used in specific fields, and must have a corresponding asset scale to ensure normal repayment of principal and interest.
Under normal circumstances, the market area mainly relies on its own adjustment, rather than the role of public financial funds including national debt and special national debt.
Special treasury bonds have strong market signals and should not be used in non-special periods or under special difficulties.
In addition, the state has implemented a series of tax and fee reduction policies in recent years to continue to reduce the burden on enterprises.
Under the current situation, it is temporarily impossible to raise the additional collection standards for electricity prices.
Relevant ministries and commissions have repeatedly stated that they will solve the underpayment in a market-oriented way, and financial subsidies are close to completing their historical mission in the development of new energy.
For example, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the People's Bank of China, the China Banking Regulatory Commission and the National Energy Administration jointly issued the "Notice on Guiding Increased Financial Support to Promote the Healthy and Orderly Development of Wind Power and Photovoltaic Power Generation Industries" in March 2021, encouraging financial institutions to Projects that have been included in the subsidy list will issue subsidized loans for confirmation of rights.
In the second half of 2020, there was a heated discussion in the industry about the feasibility of solving the renewable energy subsidy gap through the issuance of bonds by grid companies.
At that time, it was reported that the issuance of the first tranche of more than 140 billion yuan in arrears for the issuance of new energy subsidies is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
The People's Bank of China, the Ministry of Finance, the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments have agreed that the two major power grid companies will issue bonds to solve the problem of new energy shortages.
This plan has not been finalized. Analysts believe that due to the large subsidy gap, this move will greatly increase the debt ratio of power grid companies and affect corporate financing and development.
Since the beginning of this year, with the full rollout of the most stringent "subsidy verification" in history, the solution to the underpayment of renewable energy has been accelerated.
In order to further find out the base of renewable energy power generation subsidies, in March this year, the National Development and Reform Commission, the National Energy Administration and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued the "Notice on Carrying out the Self-inspection of Renewable Energy Power Generation Subsidies", requiring the nationwide development of renewable energy power generation subsidies. The verification of energy power generation subsidies, and severely crack down on acts such as fraudulent subsidies for renewable energy power generation.
The self-inspection targets include power grids and power generation enterprises, and the scope is full-caliber renewable energy power generation projects that have been connected to the grid by December 31, 2021 and require subsidies, mainly wind power, centralized photovoltaic power plants and biomass power generation projects.
Some provinces have already taken action.
On July 1, the Development and Reform Commission of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region issued a notice on the abolition of the on-grid tariff approval documents for some renewable energy projects. A total of 24 problematic on-grid tariff approval documents for renewable energy projects were abolished, involving 8 places.
Inner Mongolia has abolished the on-grid electricity price of problematic renewable energy projects, including: 17 projects that are not included in the annual construction scale management, and 7 projects that change the investment entity without authorization.
On August 4, Wuxi Taiji Industrial Co., Ltd. (Taiji Industrial, 600667) issued the "Indicative Announcement on the Impact of the Approval and Revocation of Electricity Prices on the Company's Operations", stating that the subsidiary Information Industry Electronics Eleventh Design and Research Institute Technology Engineering Co., Ltd. The company's 5 centralized photovoltaic power station projects in Inner Mongolia were requested by the competent authorities to abolish the approval of the on-grid electricity price due to unauthorized changes in investment entities.
The power station project companies involved obtained the approval for the electricity price in 2015, which was implemented according to the on-grid electricity price including tax of 0.9 yuan/kWh.
After the approval of the electricity price is abolished, according to the existing situation, the power station involved will not enjoy the electricity subsidy of 0.6171 yuan/kWh, and the benchmark electricity price of 0.2829 yuan/kWh will be implemented.
Taiji Industry stated that since the follow-up related policies of the power station involved are still unclear, as of March 31, 2022, whether the 360 million yuan of electricity subsidy receivable corresponding to the involved power station can be received and whether the received electricity subsidy of 413 million yuan needs to be returned. Uncertainty remains.
In March this year, the Ministry of Finance announced the 2022 central government fund expenditure budget table. The "central government expenditure" in "other government fund expenditure" increased from 92.8 billion yuan in 2021 to 452.8 billion yuan, and the budget was implemented in the previous year. 487.8% of the number.
The huge increase from previous years is believed to be mainly used to address subsidy arrears.
Under the special energy supply situation, central enterprises took the lead in obtaining partial subsidies for "blood transfusion".
The executive meeting of the State Council held on May 11 announced that, on the basis of disbursing 50 billion yuan in renewable energy subsidies to central power generation enterprises in the early stage and injecting 20 billion yuan through the state-owned capital operating budget, an additional 50 billion yuan in subsidies and 10 billion yuan in capital injection will be allocated. , to support the bailout of coal-fired power companies and increase power generation.