Towards a safe, efficient, and low-carbon energy system in China

The Sino-German Energy Transition project shares results at the final conference

Group photo of participants in Berlin

Ms. Ursula Borak, Deputy Director General of department Climate Action of BMWK giving opening remarks

Panel discussion I on "a safe, reliable, efficient, and renewable energy system"

Panel discussion II on "energy transition across sectors"

Panel discussion III on "making a difference locally"

Event impressions

On 29 September, the German and Chinese partners of the Sino-German Energy Transition project presented the overall results of the project over the last three years and discussed with experts and the audience how Germany and China can best tackle the challenging task of building a safe, efficiency and renewable based future energy system, and achieving climate neutrality across all sectors.

The project partners have worked on several topics central to meeting these challenges, ranging from distributed energy solutions and power market reforms, to tapping flexibility potential, coupling industry, transport and electricity sectors using EVs or green hydrogen, and energy efficiency. Ms. Ursula Borak, Deputy Director General of department Climate Action of BMWK congratulated the project on its results and stressed the significance of the project in her opening remarks, “It is an important cornerstone of BMWK’s long-standing climate and energy cooperation with its Chinese partners. Throughout the last years, EnTrans has had a very important role in China, bringing in foreign expertise into the Chinese debate on energy transition.”

After a keynote speech on China’s energy and climate development delivered by Jacques Warichet, power system transformation expert from International Energy Agency (IEA), the project partners consolidated the research results into three sessions to introduce and discuss the proposed approaches to develop a clear picture of the future climate neutral energy system in Germany and China:

A safe, reliable, efficient, and renewable energy system

Large shares of variable renewable energies will characterize the future climate neutral energy system. This requires new ways of planning and operating the system, as well utilizing flexibility. Under this thematic scope, the project team at Dena examined the issues capacity adequacy; demand-side management (DSM), storage, and energy efficiency technologies; and measures for power system flexibility. Key results include:

Energy transition across sectors

Not just the energy sector, but all sectors of the economy, from transport to industry will have to be decarbonized to reach climate neutrality. Electrification, hydrogen, and efficiency are building blocks of this transition. To address these challenges, the project team from Agora Energiewende brought out research, expert exchange forums on the topics of:

  • China’s New Electric Power System and Distributed Renewable Energy Development
  • Green Hydrogen in China and Its Role in Industrial Decarbonization
  • Shanxi’s Low-carbon Energy Transformation: experience and lessons from cases of regional coal transitions in Germany

The project team will share the results and publish the relevant reports before the end of the year.

Making a difference locally 

The transformation towards climate neutrality will take place locally and entail transformations within rural and urban areas. For this thematic topic area, the Sino-German Energy transition project team at GIZ has as partnered up with researchers at the China Academy of Sciences and the University of Wuppertal in Germany to gather data about self-sufficiency potentials and energy flows in villages in China and Germany, modelling their renewable energy potentials and energy demand. Furthermore, GIZ worked with the Reiner Lemoine Institute to study best practices in facilitating the integration of electric vehicles and high-power charging infrastructure in urban areas. Key results include:


The conference event concludes the 2020-2022 phase of the project, and the project implementation will continue in 2023. In the upcoming months, the project team will continue the cooperative research on decarbonisation and renewable energy integration. And just as both Chinese and German experts expressed during the panel discussion, we look forward into deepening and widening the Sino-German cooperation between research institutes and think tanks on energy policies and measures to bring joint effort for a clean, safe, efficient and effective future low carbon energy system to contribute our common carbon neutrality goal.


As part of the Sino-German Energy Partnership under the commission of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), the Sino-German Energy Transition project supports the Chinese and German think tanks to strengthen the Sino-German scientific exchange on the energy transition and shares German energy transition experiences with a Chinese audience. The project aims to promote a low-carbon-oriented energy policy and help to build a more effective, low-carbon energy system in China through international cooperation and mutual benefit policy research and modeling.  To carry out the project, GIZ, the German Energy Agency (dena) and Agora Energiewende collaborate with the China Electric Power Planning and Engineering Institute (EPPEI), China Southern Power Grid (CSG), and the Institute for Applied Ecology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IAE).

Project results

Report

Decentralized Flexibility and Integration of Renewable Energy (Chinese)

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Report

Decentralized Flexibility and Integration of Renewable Energy (English)

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Report

A comparative Analysis and Simulation of DSM and Energy Efficiency in Chinese and German Industry (Chinese)

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Report

A comparative Analysis and Simulation of DSM and Energy Efficiency in Chinese and German Industry (English)

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Report

Pursuing a low-carbon rural energy transition in China and Germany (Chinese)

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Report

Pursuing a low-carbon rural energy transition in China and Germany (English)

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Video

GIZ research - Quantifying the impact of air pollution on solar output

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Video

Data Centre Flexibility in Germany and China: Results from an Interview-based study

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Report

Data centre flexibility in Germany and China

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