Infrastructure has entered the period of "nine gold and ten silver" acceleration, and new energy infrastructure has become the focus. Since September 2022, a large number of new energy infrastructure projects have been contracted or started, including several projects worth tens of billions of dollars.

For example, Harbin Electric Wind Energy Company signed a new energy industry project with a total investment of 25.5 billion yuan with Bohai New Area and Huanghua City. Jiangsu Lianyungang signed a batch of new energy industry projects with a total investment of 20.5 billion yuan. At the end of September, the second batch of key projects of the State Energy Corporation for 2022 were intensively started, including 19 projects in six categories, including coal, transportation, chemical industry, coal power, hydropower and new energy, with a total investment of more than 73 billion yuan.

In October, the construction of five major projects in Xinjiang, including the "fourth line of West-East gas transmission" and "Xinjiang Electric Power into Chongqing supporting power supply", focused on energy transmission, comprehensive utilization of energy and new energy development, with a total investment of about 77.6 billion yuan.

In terms of the main investment areas of new energy infrastructure, wind power and photoelectric bases, energy storage infrastructure, as well as the construction of charging piles, filling (gas) stations and hydrogenation stations have become the focus of local efforts.

According to the experts interviewed, the construction of wind power and photovoltaic will create a huge market opportunity for energy storage infrastructure. At the same time, because the development of new energy has the characteristics of regional imbalance, the future UHV will also become one of the key areas of new energy infrastructure. With the unexpected development of the new energy vehicle industry, charging piles and other supporting infrastructure are still in the stage of short supply. In the future, new energy infrastructure in these areas will continue to accelerate.

New energy infrastructure accelerated

In June 2022, the National Development and Reform Commission and nine other ministries and commissions jointly issued the 14th Five-Year Plan for Renewable Energy Development, which clearly states that renewable energy will account for more than 50 percent of the increase in primary energy consumption during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. About 3.3 trillion kilowatt-hours of renewable energy will be generated annually, and wind and solar power will double.

Under the guidance of this goal, the construction of wind power and photovoltaic infrastructure has become the focus of local efforts. From the regional point of view, the northwest region has outstanding wind and light resources, and focuses on the construction of large-scale scenery base projects.

On September 26, the Qinghai Provincial Development and Reform Commission issued a "proposal on building a world-leading photovoltaic power base in Qinghai" -- a reply letter to the Proposal No. 20180064 of the First Session of the 12th CPPCC Provincial Committee. According to the letter, the first batch of 10.9 GW projects (8 GW PV) issued by the large base countries has been fully started and is expected to be fully completed by 2023. The second batch of 7 million kilowatt projects (5.4 million kilowatt photovoltaic) issued by the countries are in the early stage of work, and some projects are under construction, and are expected to be completed in 2024.

According to the Notice on the List of the First Batch of Large-scale wind Power and photovoltaic Base Construction Projects Focusing on desert, Gobi and desert areas issued by the National Development and Reform Commission. The first list of large-scale wind power and photovoltaic base construction projects focusing on desert, Gobi and desert areas covers 19 provinces, including Inner Mongolia, Qinghai and Gansu, with a total scale of 97.05 GW.

Zhejiang, Guangdong and other eastern provinces are also adding wind and light construction. For example, Zhejiang Province in the "Zhejiang Province photovoltaic industry high-quality development action plan (draft)" proposed to support the conditional city and county implementation of new industrial plant roof photovoltaic power generation installation "full coverage", strive to 2025, the province's new public buildings, new plant roof photovoltaic coverage reached 30%. Guangdong will start construction of several offshore wind power projects in 2022. Qingzhou 4500 MW offshore wind power project located in Yangjiang will fully start construction on August 31. The total installed capacity of the project is 500MW.

With the continuous promotion of wind power and photovoltaic base projects, the installed capacity of wind power and photovoltaic power generation has been steadily increased. By the end of August, the country's installed power generation capacity was about 2.47 billion kW, up 8.0 percent year on year, data showed. Among them, the installed capacity of wind power was about 340 million kW, up 16.6% year on year, with a cumulative increase of 16.14 GW; The installed capacity of photovoltaic power generation was about 350 million kW, up 27.2% year on year, with a cumulative increase of 44.47 GW.

Meanwhile, energy storage infrastructure construction will accelerate in 2022. Data showed that from the beginning of 2022 to the end of July 2022, 102 pumped storage projects with a total installed capacity of 126.9GW and a total investment of 617.69 billion yuan were approved but not yet started.

As a large thermal sector in the field of energy storage, several pumped storage projects have been launched recently. On Oct. 9, the first two units of the Jinzhai Pumped storage power Station in Lu 'an, Anhui Province, went into production, moving closer to the goal of putting all units into production next year. A day later, Hubei Energy, a subsidiary of the Three Gorges Group, announced that it planned to invest in Luotian Pingyuan pumping and storage power station in Hubei Province. On the same day, the Weijiachong Pumped Storage Power Station in Huanggang, Hubei Province announced the official start of the project and entered the comprehensive construction stage.

The construction of new energy supporting infrastructure is also accelerating, and many places have put forward the construction targets of charging piles, filling (gas) stations and hydrogen refueling stations. For example, according to the Energy Development Plan of Beijing during the 14th Five-Year Plan Period, by 2025, Beijing will strive to build 700,000 charging piles and 74 hydrogen refueling stations, and the average service radius of electric vehicle public charging facilities in the plain area will be less than 3 kilometers. Chongqing has proposed that by the end of 2025, the service efficiency, technical capability and coverage rate of the smart connected new energy vehicle infrastructure network in Chongqing will reach the leading level in the western region, and more than 240,000 charging piles will be built.

China (shenzhen) comprehensive development research institute of new energy and low carbon development research center, deputy director of the WeiFuLei told reporter in the 21st century economy, from the point of charging pile, currently still in the demand of stage, the main reason is that rapid growth of sales of new energy vehicles and permeability, 2022 city new energy vehicles have permeability of 20%, this kind of circumstance, The layout of charging piles in various places can further fill the gap in demand.

New energy infrastructure included in REITs pilot

Wei Fu Lei pointed out that at present, new energy infrastructure construction has three more important directions. First of all, power supply construction, "14th Five-Year" modern energy system planning and renewable energy planning are clearly laid out scenery of large base construction. The second is energy storage infrastructure construction. New energy generation is unstable, to better play the role of new energy, energy storage infrastructure must cooperate. Since 2022, the development of energy storage has been promoted to an important position. Many places require a certain proportion of energy storage as support when constructing landscape infrastructure. The construction of UHV is also an important aspect. New energy is faced with the problem of mismatch between source and load regions, and the mismatch between resource enrichment and energy consumption. Therefore, the problem of new energy power transmission needs to be solved through UHV.

"The scenery base guarantees power supply, UHV strengthens the power grid, and energy storage improves stability, so these three directions will be the focus of new energy infrastructure." Mr Verfley said.

Peng Peng, secretary general of China New Energy Power Investment and Financing Alliance, told 21st Century Business Herald that the vigorous construction of wind power and photovoltaic undoubtedly brings huge market opportunities for energy storage in the power market. In order to absorb a higher proportion of wind and light resources, the flexibility of the entire power grid system needs to be further improved, and one of the important ways is energy storage.

At the same time, with the rapid development of the new energy vehicle industry, the demand for supporting infrastructure construction is increasing. Wei Fulei believes that the new energy vehicle industry has become one of the important support points in our economy and is also an important part of implementing the "double carbon" strategy. In order to ensure environmental protection, new energy vehicles need to use green electricity, which needs the support of infrastructure system. Firstly, the access of green electricity, and secondly, the charging pile system, etc., can ensure the convenience of charging, so as to promote the development of this industry faster.

Since 2022, in order to ensure sufficient sources of funds for the construction of new energy infrastructure, the state has introduced relevant policies to include new energy infrastructure in the category of special debt, RIETs and other support.

On May 30, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration issued a Notice on the Implementation Plan of Promoting the High-quality Development of New Energy in the New Era, which proposed to increase the support of green bonds and green credit for new energy projects. To study and explore the inclusion of new energy projects in the scope of pilot infrastructure Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) support. We will support the inclusion of certified greenhouse gas emission reductions from eligible new energy projects in the national carbon emission trading market for offsetting quotas.

On August 30, the Ministry of Finance released a report on China's fiscal policy implementation in the first half of the year. According to the report, we will optimize the investment areas of special bonds, and include new infrastructure and new energy projects as key support areas.

Reasonable deployment requirements under the State Council, the greater use special bonds in the existing traffic infrastructure, energy, ecological and environmental protection, affordable housing projects in areas such as basis, clear the new energy, new construction conform to the conditions in the field of government investment projects into the scope of special bonds of local government support, boost development of emerging industry.

Peng pointed out that the promotion of new energy infrastructure into REITs is to expand the scale of direct financing and give full play to the role of the capital market. Compared with other assets, REITs in the field of new energy have a high safety factor and the overall future income is relatively guaranteed, which is a good choice for investors.

"The inclusion of new energy in REITs means that new energy assets can be directly financed separately in capital markets. In the next stage, I hope the main body covered by new energy REITs can gradually transition from state-owned enterprises to private enterprises." Peng Peng said. Editor/Xu Shengpeng