Academician He Kebin: Only After Building a New Energy Technology System Can We Be In the Forefront Early on Wind and Solar Energy Utilization

On March 27 at the “2022 Tianfu Carbon Neutrality Forum” hosted by Tianfu Yongxing Laboratory, He Kebin, Chinese Academy of Engineering Academician and a professor of Tsinghua University, proposed that in the world’s future development, every country had the potential and opportunity to be in the forefront on wind and solar energy utilization as long as they could build a technology system of large-scale utilization of new energy.

Academician He Kebin pointed out that by the end of 2022, more than 130 countries had proposed carbon neutrality commitments; Under the pressure of carbon neutrality in the global supply chain, multi-national enterprises have also proposed their own carbon neutrality commitments; The issuance of global green bonds and the total transaction volume of the carbon market have exceeded the data of 2021 and 2020 by 50%, and even doubled. Undoubtedly, the world’s development in the coming decades would be closely related to carbon.

Thanks to the carbon neutrality goal, the development model of the world economy on energy is transforming from resource-based dependence to technology-based dependence. Analyzing from the total reserves of global energy, non-fossil energy represented by ‘wind and solar energy’ is gradually replacing fossil energy. “If we turn to use renewable resources, to a certain extent, the crisis that the world economy’s dependence on existing fossil energy resources will be relieved.” Academician He Kebin explained. From the perspective of global energy distribution, the global distribution of fossil energy is extremely uneven in terms of space. However, all countries have their own considerable amount of wind and solar energy, which makes the path of transforming from resource-based dependence to technology-based dependence thereby driving future economic development even clearer.

On the road to building a new energy technology system, the world is currently facing three major challenges. The first challenge is the innovation of key core technologies. For the purpose of achieving carbon neutrality, China needs to place the energy system at its core and new power technologies at the core of this core. The second challenge is the key materials required in the supply chain of the new energy industry. Academician He Kebin emphasized: “The shift from resource-based dependence to technology-based dependence is not simply think that we no longer rely on various mineral resources. On the contrary, in the new energy system, many key materials have become more and more important mineral resources.” The third challenge is the constraints on the evolution of the ecological environment under the carbon neutrality path. As a matter of fact, huge technological changes will change the economic and industrial structure of society, and changes in energy pattern, industrial layout, and human activity emissions will further have a significant impact on the ecological environment.

Thus, how to achieve a safe and stable transformation of the future resource system and assist in the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goal? “The answer to this question lies in some big data and great models.” As far as He Kebin is concerned, through the coupling of the atmospheric chemical transmission model, the health assessment model, the crop model, and the water resource model, we can establish a comprehensive assessment model of the ecological environment system, and couple it with the earth system model. Accordingly, a multi-objective optimization simulation platform can be established, and then a path of pollution and carbon reduction synergy friendly to the ecological environment can be proposed.

[ By Chen Min from Global Times ]