National Energy Administration: "Guiding Opinions" Promote the high-quality consumption of new energy while promoting large-scale development.

Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration issued the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Consumption and Regulation of New Energy," and relevant officials from the National Energy Administration accepted an interview and answered questions from reporters. The officials stated that the two departments will formulate new energy consumption policies as a reform task to be independently promoted by 2025. They will adhere to deepening reforms, improving policy measures, enhancing the power system's capacity to accept, allocate, and regulate new energy, promote high-quality consumption of new energy while achieving large-scale development, and better support the goal of peak carbon emissions and national contribution target. The "Guiding Opinions" adhere to a systematic approach, classification of policies, diversified consumption, market-driven, safety as the foundation, innovation-driven, improve new energy consumption measures, optimize system regulation, and set forth the new energy consumption and regulation work goals for 2030 and 2035. Next, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration will coordinate the promotion of new energy consumption and regulation work, further refine and improve supporting policies based on the reform directions and tasks proposed in the "Guiding Opinions," and ensure the implementation of relevant measures. Provincial-level energy authorities are the responsible entities for coordinating the consumption of new energy in their respective regions, comprehensively organizing the implementation of various consumption measures to achieve consumption goals. The original text is as follows: Relevant officials from the National Energy Administration answer questions about the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Consumption and Regulation of New Energy" Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration issued the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Consumption and Regulation of New Energy" (Development and Reform Energy [2025] No. 1360, hereinafter referred to as the "Guiding Opinions"), and relevant officials from the National Energy Administration accepted an interview and answered questions from reporters. Question: What is the background and significance of the issuance of the "Guiding Opinions"? In recent years, the scale of new energy has grown rapidly, its proportion has increased rapidly, and the pressure of consumption has continued to increase. How to coordinate the development and consumption of new energy has become a major issue in the green and low-carbon transition of energy. The Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) clearly requires the improvement of policies and measures for the consumption and regulation of new energy, and the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the CPC calls for accelerating the construction of a new energy system, actively and prudently promoting and achieving the peak carbon emissions. Recently, the new round of the country's autonomous contribution target has clarified the development goals for new energy. In order to fully implement the requirements of the reform, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration will formulate new energy consumption policies as a reform task to be independently promoted by 2025, adhere to deepening reforms, improve policy measures, enhance the power system's capacity to accept, allocate, and regulate new energy, promote high-quality consumption of new energy while achieving large-scale development, and better support the goal of peak carbon emissions and national autonomous contribution target. According to the relevant work arrangements, the National Energy Administration organized research on coordinating the development and consumption of new energy, comprehensively summarized the current situation of new energy development and consumption, conducted in-depth analysis of the factors affecting new energy consumption, and studied and proposed policy measures to promote the consumption and regulation of new energy. Based on the research results and combined with the practical work experience of promoting new energy consumption in the past two years, the "guiding opinions" were formulated and issued. Question: What is the overall arrangement for doing a good job in the consumption of new energy in the new situation according to the "Guiding Opinions"? The "Guiding Opinions" adhere to a systematic approach, classification of policies, diversified consumption, market-driven, safety as the foundation, innovation-driven, improve new energy consumption measures, optimize system regulation, and set forth the goals for new energy consumption and regulation work by 2030 and 2035. By 2030, a multi-level and efficient coordinated new energy consumption and regulation system will be basically established, ensuring the smooth grid connection, diversified utilization, and efficient operation of new energy, with the main demand for new electricity mainly met by new energy generation. The adaptability of the new power system will be significantly enhanced, the system's regulating capacity will be greatly improved, the mechanism of power market promoting new energy consumption will be more complete, and the cross-provincial and cross-regional trading of new energy will be more smooth, meeting the reasonable consumption needs of more than 200 million kilowatts of new energy added annually nationwide, helping support the goal of peak carbon emissions. By 2035, the new power system that is suitable for a high proportion of new energy will be basically completed, the new energy consumption and regulation system will be further improved, the national unified power market will play a fundamental role in allocating new energy resources, the new energy will be optimally allocated and efficiently consumed nationwide, supporting the achievement of the national autonomous contribution target. Question: What are the new ideas and measures in promoting the consumption and regulation of new energy in the "Guiding Opinions"? Based on a thorough analysis of the new situation and new requirements for the development of new energy, the "Guiding Opinions" plan and propose innovative measures with a spirit of reform. First, classify and guide the development and consumption of new energy. For a long time, the new energy consumption work has mainly focused on centralized new energy within the province. With the increasing diversity of new energy development models, the "Guiding Opinions" propose to classify new energy development and consumption into five categories, coordinate the external delivery and on-site consumption of new energy in the "sand, mountain, and wasteland" new energy bases, optimize the integrated development and consumption of hydro, wind, and solar bases, promote the standardized and orderly development and consumption of offshore wind power, scientifically and efficiently promote the centralized development and consumption of new energy within the province, actively expand the space for the development and consumption of distributed new energy, further clarify the requirements for classified measures. Second, vigorously promote the innovation and development of new modes and new formats of new energy consumption. Under the guidance of the "dual-carbon" target, new models and formats are constantly emerging, and the role of coordinating and promoting new energy consumption and green power consumption is increasingly prominent. The "Guiding Opinions" have sorted and summarized the new models and formats that promote new energy consumption, innovated the integrated development model of new energy, promoted the integration of new energy with industries, supported the development of four types of new formats: integrated generation, storage, grid, and load, direct connection of green power, smart microgrids, and incremental distribution network access for new energy, further clarifying the development direction and requirements. Third, enhance the adaptability of the new power system to the consumption of new energy. In response to the adaptability issue of the power system under the situation of large-scale new energy development, accelerate the construction of a new power system to solve the problem of new energy consumption, and actively adapt to the rapid development requirements of new energy. Insist on the simultaneous construction of conventional regulation capacity and new regulation capacity, coordinate the promotion of various types of regulation capacity construction. Accelerate the construction of a new power grid platform with main and auxiliary coordination, optimize the national power flow, make full use of regional and provincial regulation resources, complement each other reasonably in the layout of flexible mutual assistance grid projects, strengthen the construction of the main grid, create a new type of distribution system suitable for large-scale distributed new energy access, promote the coordinated development of smart microgrids and large grids according to local conditions, comprehensively improve the power grid carrying capacity. Build a new power dispatching system, explore the coordinated control mode of clusters of new energy bases such as "sand, mountain, and wasteland" new energy base, hydro, wind, and solar base, offshore wind power base, and accelerate the promotion of the integrated dispatching mode of new energy and on-site storage integrated output curve call. Strengthen the safety governance of the new power system, improve the safety management system for new energy and new types of grid-connected entities. Fourth, improve the national unified power market system to promote the consumption of new energy. Focus on improving the adaptability of the power market to the characteristics of new energy generation, propose key tasks to further improve the market system. Expand the multi-level new energy consumption market system. Shorten the medium and long-term trading cycle to achieve flexible and continuous trading, promote multi-year power purchase agreement mechanisms to stabilize long-term consumption space; give full play to the functions of the spot market; set reasonable electricity ancillary services trading varieties; promote inter-provincial and cross-regional new energy trading. Improve the rules system for new energy participation in the power market. Promote the establishment of trading rules for the integrated model of "sand, mountain, and wasteland" new energy base, hydro, wind, and solar new energy base participating in the market; support distributed new energy, energy storage, virtual power plants, etc., to participate in the power market through aggregation or direct trading mode; research and promote the participation of new energy, users, and other entities in cross-provincial and cross-regional power market direct trading. Innovate the price mechanism to promote the consumption of new energy. Encourage all types of power sources in the new energy outbound base to form a unified power price; for new energy consumed nearby, implement and improve the electricity price mechanism that promotes new energy consumption nearby; for regulation resources, improve the capacity electricity price mechanism for coal-fired power plants, pumped storage, new energy storage, etc.; for users, improve the retail market price mechanism that reflects the differences in time value, research and establish a sound residential time-of-use electricity price mechanism. Fifth, strengthen technological innovation support for new energy consumption. Clearly define technological innovation tasks around key areas and domains to ensure the efficient consumption of new energy. Breakthrough new technologies for efficient power generation of new energy, accelerate the improvement of power prediction accuracy for different time scales of new energy. Breakthrough system flexible regulation technologies, breakthrough large-capacity long-duration energy storage technologies, promote the variable-speed regulation capacity of newly-built pumped storage power stations, accelerate the application and promotion of the next-generation coal-fired power plant pilot projects. Strengthen power grid operation technologies, strengthen research on efficient simulation and stable operating control technologies for the power system, pilot advanced transmission technologies, promote grid-type control technologies. Upgrade intelligent control technologies, accelerate the application of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing in the coordinated operation of the main and auxiliary microgrids. Sixth, improve the management of new energy consumption. In the five-year electricity planning, guide various regions to coordinate the planning and layout of new energy and supporting power grid and regulation capacity construction with the tiered utilization rate target, and scientifically formulate annual new energy utilization rate targets and future three-year prospects for each region at the provincial-level energy authorities, comprehensively determine the annual grid-connected new energy (including distributed new energy) development scale based on the new energy utilization rate target and the weight target of renewable energy power consumption responsibility to achieve the "quality" and "quantity" development of new energy. Considering that after new energy enters the market nationwide, relying solely on the new energy utilization rate indicators cannot comprehensively and accurately assess the effect of new energy consumption, it is proposed to gradually transform the assessment of new energy consumption from a single new energy utilization rate indicator to a comprehensive evaluation index system. In order to strengthen monitoring, provincial-level energy authorities are requested to establish a full-cycle monitoring and early warning mechanism for "planning-construction-grid connection-consumption" of new energy, and areas where the new energy utilization rate has significantly decreased or the utilization rate target has not been met must scientifically demonstrate the scale of new grid-connected new energy. Question: How will the implementation of the "Guiding Opinions" be promoted next? According to the clear division of responsibilities in the "Guiding Opinions," each unit will conscientiously implement the work. The National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration will coordinatedly promote the consumption and regulation of new energy, further refine and improve supporting policies based on the reform directions and tasks proposed in the "Guiding Opinions," and ensure the implementation of relevant measures. Provincial-level energy authorities are the responsible entities for coordinating the consumption of new energy in their respective regions, comprehensively organizing the implementation of various consumption measures to achieve consumption goals. Grid enterprises are the main entities responsible for ensuring the grid connection and regulation operation of new energy, continuously strengthening grid construction, and optimizing system operation. Power generation enterprises should enhance the reliable substitutability of new energy, and strengthen the construction of regulation resources. Various types of operating entities should actively participate in the interactive operation of the power system. The National Energy Administration dispatched agencies will carry out regular supervision on the implementation of policies and measures for the consumption and regulation of new energy. This article was selected from the "National Development and Reform Commission" public account, edited by GMTEight: Jiang Yuanhua.