(Article reprinted from the public number of Energy Storage Institute) On the morning of May 23, at the 16th SNEC Global Photovoltaic Conference, GCL Group Chairman Zhu Gongshan delivered a keynote speech on "The New Energy Ecological Leap in the Era of Great Changes".

As Chairman of the Global Green Energy Council and Executive Chairman of SNEC, Gongshan Zhu said in his speech that new energy sources such as photovoltaic have taken the "C-position of the times" and that photovoltaic in the terawatt era is deeply embedded in other energy forms and application scenarios. He expected that in the next three years, about 80GW of new energy storage will be added each year, and the cumulative scale is expected to reach about 230GW by 2025.

"New energy is changing the world, and we need to use cross-border thinking to re-understand and redefine the way of leapfrogging new energy under the new time and space coordinates." Zhu Gongshan said.

In his view, silicon energy will play an important role in the new power system in the era of big changes. The "single breakthrough" of silicon, light and hydrogen storage will lead to a "full chain dance" of new energy sources.

Zhu also believes that the first half of the energy transformation is mainly about the electrification of the energy system, while the second half is about the low carbonisation, digitalisation, intelligence and decentralisation of the power system.

Looking to the future, Zhu Guanshan made four suggestions:

First, rationality first, orderly evolution, from the savage expansion, disorderly growth, ups and downs of the historical cycle of volatility to learn from the impulsive blind type of investment to rational and robust investment change, aim at the iterative trend, based on the internal logic of supply and demand, competition and development, co-prosperity.

Secondly, we must put technology first and innovation as king. Returning to the first principle of new energy development - based on the cost economy brought about by technological enhancement, in the key technologies and "neck" technology research and development, work together, complement each other's strengths and weaknesses, seize the axis of technological progress, model innovation, material revolution, equipment revolution In addition, we will work together to unlock the future of green power and low-carbon intelligent space.

Thirdly, we will align with international standards and unify them. The company will unify standards, improve processes and establish models in the areas of basic carbon footprint database, carbon footprint evaluation methods and processes, and carbon neutral certification, so as to be in line with international standards.

Fourth, cross-border integration and collaborative development. It is necessary to use the "third eye" to look beyond the perspective of immersion and love, and to promote new energy to embrace changes across industries and fields.

The following is the full text of Zhu Gonzan's speech:

New Energy Ecological Leap in the Era of Great Changes 16th SNEC Global Photovoltaic Conference Keynote Speech Chairman of the Global Green Energy Council Executive Chairman of SNEC Conference Zhu Gongshan (May 2023)

Dear leaders, experts from home and abroad, colleagues:

Good morning, everyone. Two years have passed since the opening of the last conference on June 2, 2021. SNEC has become more than just a PV industry event, it has become SNEC to lead the global light-storage-hydrogen industry integration conference and exhibition, which also reflects the great changes in the industry. On behalf of the Global Green Energy Council (GGC) and the Asian Photovoltaic Industry Association (APIA), and in my capacity as Executive Chairman of the conference, I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to all of you here and all the brave people who are promoting the innovation and development of the photovoltaic and green energy industries!

We are in an era of great changes not seen in a century, with waves of new technological revolutions, new material revolutions and new industrial revolutions sweeping over us. Just as people use longitude and latitude lines to mark the map, there are also two clear "longitude and latitude lines" in the current and future map of the new energy industry, one is the golden line of innovation "change of the times" and the other is the silver line of "industrial One is the golden line of innovation, "the change of the times", and the other is the silver line of technology, "the theory of evolution". The golden thread of innovation and the silver thread of technology are intertwined, forming new species, shaping new industries and opening up a new future. Next, I will briefly report to the conference on my views on "The New Energy Ecological Leap in an Era of Great Change".

1.A. Industrial transformation: photovoltaic and other new energy sources stand in the "C position of the times". PV has entered the era of terawatt, deeply embedded in other energy forms and application scenarios.

In August last year, China's installed photovoltaic power generation exceeded wind power for the first time, making photovoltaic the "second brother" of new energy; by the end of March this year, the cumulative installed capacity of photovoltaic surpassed hydropower, becoming the "boss" of new energy and the second largest power source in the country. At the global level, new energy sources such as photovoltaics are also "unique". It is expected that the world's new photovoltaic installations will be around 350GW this year, and that the cumulative installed capacity will likely exceed that of hydropower next year, surpass that of natural gas in 2026, and surpass that of coal as the number one energy source in 2027.

From the global spatial pattern, Europe's energy prices are rising, driving rapid growth in demand for household PV, which is expected to maintain a high growth rate of 40% in Europe this year. 2025, the cumulative installed PV capacity in Europe will exceed 320GW, and will reach more than 1TW by 2030. In the next decade, the cumulative installed PV capacity in the US will also reach around 800GW.

In the context of source-grid-load-storage integration, the energy storage industry has seen explosive growth. It is expected that about 80GW of new energy storage will be added each year in the next three years, and the cumulative scale is expected to reach about 230GW by 2025. As for hydrogen energy, the market competitiveness of green hydrogen is gradually improving as the single-line capacity of electrolytic tank continues to increase and the electricity consumption gradually decreases. It is expected that after 2025, green hydrogen is expected to achieve parity with natural gas-fired hydrogen, and around 2030 it is expected to be parity with coal-fired hydrogen, and to maintain a compound growth of around 5% in production over the next decade.

New energy is changing the world, and we need to use cross-border thinking to re-understand and redefine the way of leapfrogging new energy sources under the new time and space coordinates. Today, when we talk about photovoltaics, we are actually talking about new energy sources such as scenery, storage, hydrogen and ammonia at the same time, as well as the diversified transformation of source, network, load and storage, including the new power system brought about by the digital energy revolution.

In the next step, a high proportion of renewable energy will be superimposed on a high proportion of power electronics, and a new digital energy system consisting of "bits + watts", i.e. digital technology + power electronics, will be automatically regulated, intelligently operated and dynamically balanced. In this new digital energy system, "bits + watts", i.e. digital technology + power electronics, will automatically regulate, intelligently operate and dynamically balance the energy supply. In this new digital energy system, AI, and the three core cornerstones of AI - data, arithmetic and algorithms - as well as revolutionary technologies such as the digital twin, mobile energy storage, virtual/augmented reality, biotechnology, human-computer interaction and cognition, will have a friendly and close "photosynthesis".

At the Warren Buffett Equity Conference some time ago, energy was mentioned 40 times. One of the four engines of Warren Buffett's investment returns is new energy. According to Buffett, this is "our last giant". Personally, I think this is a very accurate analogy, as new energy is also our last giant in the fight against climate change and in the drive for global carbon neutrality.

2.Iterative upgrading: Silicon energy will play an important role in the new power system. The "single breakthrough" of silicon-light hydrogen storage has led to a "full chain dance" of new energy sources.

At the last SNEC conference, we shared the view that carbon neutrality is giving rise to a clean alternative revolution in which "silicon-based energy" replaces "carbon-based energy". The essence of the transformation is to replace traditional carbon energy with clean energy represented by silicon energy. The net energy yield of silicon energy is more than a thousand times that of carbon energy for the same mass. In terms of the combination of silicon and light, assuming that half of the earth's surface is covered with photovoltaic modules, it would only take two or three hours of power generation to meet the world's annual electricity demand. The energy payback period from silicon base to system to electricity is only about one year, which can be shortened to seven or eight months by applying the lowest carbon footprint GCL-FBR granular silicon material, with a full life-cycle electricity input-output ratio of about 1:64.

Silicon energy will play a vital role in new highly coupled power systems such as high percentage new energy sources, new energy storage systems and flexible DC transmission. Silicon-based power devices, especially silicon carbide power devices, will allow energy to move from physical form to digital form, realise chip miniaturisation, low power consumption and high efficiency, energy can be controlled, traded and regulated, allowing energy to become digital, power to become arithmetic, and arithmetic to be greatly accelerated, thus bringing about a change in social productivity. With silicon energy and the deep involvement of silicon-based power devices, the next step is to make "large power supplies and grids" compatible with "distributed", with a large number of user-side entities that have the dual attributes of power generation and consumption, and with flexible interaction between source, network, load and storage. Energy saving systems and mobile energy storage systems will have a new look.

In the roadmap of silicon and light promoting each other and developing as one, a variety of technical routes are blossoming. TOPCon, IBC, HJT heterojunction and other N-type battery technologies have emerged by virtue of their late-stage advantages. In the N-type battery era, the technology combination of GCL-FBR plus CCZ will also boost the battery industry along the path of new technologies with advantages in cost, efficiency, quality and carbon footprint.

Starting in 2023, calcium titanium ore battery technology will enter its first year of mass production. After crossing the major threshold of mass production, calcium titanium ore will stride forward into a new era of proven applications. From small area to large size and high efficiency, from laboratory to production line and industrialisation, from single junction to stacking with crystalline silicon, the conversion efficiency has now reached over 30% and is about to open up a huge new space for optoelectronic applications. Chalcogenide will appear in flexible wearable electronic devices, lightweight portable power generation devices, automobiles, photovoltaic glass building integration, computers, mobile phones and other consumer terminals, close embedded in people's clothing, food, housing and transport use.

In the process of the parallel advancement of landscape and hydrogen storage technologies, energy storage is becoming more and more important as a "mover" of energy and a "stabiliser" of new energy sources. In the future, intelligence, energy storage and hydrogen energy are the keys to break the bottleneck of new energy, while materials, technology, management/control system and safety are the keys to break the bottleneck of energy storage development. As the most critical factor affecting the performance of the battery cell, the material with the lowest charge/discharge losses and the highest energy efficiency will be favoured by the market, thus bringing higher life to the downstream energy storage batteries and systems, releasing more power and achieving better operational benefits.

In addition, energy storage safety will become the rigid requirement of the "number one word in the sky". In the process of the coexistence of large base and commercial and industrial distributed, the domestic market and overseas energy storage demand explosion, energy storage enterprises will face a full range of upgrade test, mainly including:

Responsiveness to the "five big and six small" bidding requirements;

Sales channels and after-sales service systems for overseas markets, and life-cycle safety assurance capabilities for commercial and industrial distributed customers;

In the face of upstream key materials, intermediate core technology, downstream application channels of the scale of development capacity, etc., determine the ecology of the energy storage industry will certainly be towards the strong, the winners and the elimination of the inferior reshuffle of the road.

The situation of disorderly development and uneven products in the energy storage industry will be changed. The industry authorities will also take the leading technology of the leading enterprises as a blueprint and launch a series of technical specifications and safety standards. As the executive vice president of the CEC Electric Transportation and Energy Storage Branch, I am also working with industry experts and colleagues to assist the relevant parties to carry out this work.

In the field of green hydrogen preparation, alkaline electrolyzers are developing towards large scale-square, low energy consumption and intelligence, proton exchange membrane technology is improving, fuel cells, hydrogen storage systems, hydrogen fuel, electrolyzers and supporting facilities are all reducing costs and increasing efficiency at the same time, and propositions such as safety of use, industry standards and R&D and manufacturing costs that restrict the development of the industry chain are gradually being cracked. The price parity of new energy and energy storage is driving green energy to become green hydrogen. It is expected that by the middle and end of the 15th Five-Year Plan, China will have formed a more complete hydrogen industry technology innovation system, clean energy hydrogen production and supply system. At the same time, as clean production evaluation of high energy-consuming and high-emission projects becomes the norm, major carbon emitters such as steel, cement, oil refining and coking will be transformed into green industries with the addition of green hydrogen, giving rise to a new zero-carbon industrial manufacturing system.

From a comprehensive point of view, all forms of new energy are currently being accelerated into a butterfly, and the efforts of all industry colleagues are objectively giving rise to greater technological fission and accelerating the process of the energy revolution. From the former "photovoltaic +" to today's "Shaggy Wilderness", as well as "silicon light hydrogen" and "scenery storage hydrogen ammonia", etc. New energy will continue to combine across borders, broaden application scenarios and form new species, new industries and new models.

3. boundary breakthrough: the first half of the energy transformation change is mainly the electrification of the energy system, the second half is the low carbonization of the power system, digitalization, intelligence and decentralization of the same frequency resonance.

When GPT sets off an intelligent revolution, when computing power becomes digital infrastructure, coinciding with the C-positioning of new energy in the context of the double carbon target, acting as the future green and low-carbon world's bottom-holding role, a boundary breakthrough in the field of new energy is unfolding along three main lines - new electricity to cross-industry and cross-domain synergy transformation, various industries' energy use methods The transition to a green and low-carbon world, and the full activation of the potential of digital elements. Wind, light and hydrogen storage are deeply integrated with big data, decentralised identity (DCI), digital humans, fundamental models, machine learning, dynamic risk governance, metaverse, smart cities, smart transport, autonomous driving, cloud computing, blockchain and the Internet of Things.

Looking into the future, the technological revolution, scene revolution and digital revolution of new energy are sweeping every corner of the world with a prairie momentum. Energy science and technology innovation has entered a period of continuous high activity, and a large number of new energy technologies such as wind power, photovoltaic, energy storage, hydrogen energy, methanol and ammonia energy have accelerated their iteration, driving the new energy industry from a resource- and capital-led to a technology-led transformation. Power electronics, sensing IOT, all-environment simulation platform, fifth-generation mobile communications, advanced computing algorithms, industrial infrastructure software, robotics and other adaptive technologies will be deeply integrated with new energy technologies, promoting the continuous transformation and upgrading of the new energy industry.

Everything is connected, electricity is fundamental. By 2050, electricity will account for 51% of energy consumption, up from 21% today, and arithmetic, as a new type of productivity, will be inlaid with new intelligence and become one of the major users of electricity. "Energy AI" will become the next investment hotspot.

Technology is the "first energy" and materials are the "first cornerstone". The next stop for PV parity is lithium power parity and energy storage parity. Further down the road, with the promotion of west-east electricity transmission, west-hydrogen transmission and west-east calculation, new modes of power consumption are emerging, and a new power system that is safe and efficient, clean and low-carbon, flexible and intelligent is emerging. Multi-type energy storage covering the whole cycle, such as electricity storage, heat storage, gas storage and hydrogen storage, will operate in concert; "silicon, light and hydrogen" will be extended to the chemical industry to build a new paradigm of zero-carbon economy; new energy and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will replace traditional cars, and electric vehicles will be used as mobile energy storage units and nodes of distributed energy in With the empowerment of the "Cloud, Mobility, Intelligence and Chain Edge" technology, the new power system will be built together with new energy sources such as wind, light, hydrogen and ammonia, ultra-high voltage, strong smart grids, as well as virtual power plants, interruptible loads and other user-side quality regulation resources.

4.looking into the future, let's redefine, re-imagine and start afresh together.

Leaders and colleagues, we are in an era where new energy, represented by photovoltaic, wind power and hydrogen energy, resonates with zero-carbon technology. Zero-carbon transportation, zero-carbon buildings, zero-carbon chemicals, zero-carbon agriculture, zero-carbon villages and so on are spelling out the new map of zero-carbon future. On the road to carbon neutrality, the world is moving at an unprecedented pace. With the help of today's conference, I would like to briefly mention a few ideas to promote the high-quality development of the new energy industry:

First, rationality first, orderly evolution. We should learn from the historical cycle of brutal expansion, disorderly growth and big ups and downs, change from impulsive and blind investment to rational and prudent investment, aim at the iterative trend, base on the internal logic of supply and demand, compete for development and co-prosperity.

Secondly, technology is first and innovation is king. Returning to the first principle of new energy development - based on the cost economy brought about by technology enhancement, we will find that iteration is an objective law, upgrading is an inevitable trend, we have to seize the law and grow with the trend. In the key technologies and "neck" technology research and development, work together to complement each other's strengths and weaknesses, seize the axis of technological progress, model innovation, material revolution, equipment revolution, application revolution, and jointly unlock the future of green power and low-carbon wisdom space.

Thirdly, we will align with international standards and unify them. Unify standards, improve processes and establish models in carbon footprint base database, carbon footprint evaluation methods and processes, carbon neutral certification, etc. to align with international standards.

Fourth, cross-border integration and collaborative development. With the immersive love of "being in it", we also need to use the "third eye" to look beyond the perspective and promote new energy across industries and fields to embrace change. We need to move away from low-level intra-industry volumes and take the path of differentiated and complementary synergies.

We should respect intellectual property rights, protect the innovations of the industry, guide the high-quality development of the industry, promote the goal of double carbon, combat climate change, and make our contribution to protect the blue planet, care for the earth's home, and look after a better future! Thank you.