Affected by the new crown epidemic, the global supply chain has not fully recovered, and energy prices are still very high. Germany has been doing two things in the past few years, one is vigorously developing clean energy, and the other is phasing out coal and nuclear energy.
Overall, without the war, it would have eliminated nuclear and coal as much as it would have grown in clean energy. In this way its energy supply can be balanced. But after the war, Germany didn't have enough natural gas, coal and nuclear power were being phased out, and clean energy could not come up immediately, which would cause a large-scale shortage of energy in Germany.
Not just Germany, but the whole of Europe has a similar phenomenon. Fortunately, this year's European winter has been relatively mild, so that the demand for natural gas in Europe is not as much as in previous years. At the same time, the United States also participated in helping Europe to solve some of the energy problems. For example, the liquefied natural gas that was originally going to be sold to Asia was transferred to Europe.
Germany also had a very quick response. The war caused Germany to change its own energy policy in 10 days, more than it has done in the past 10 years. It recently announced that it had brought forward its goal of 100% renewable clean energy from 2045 to 2035, a full 10 years ahead. This is also a very representative policy change.
How to solve it in the short term? One is to temporarily use coal and oil while extending the useful life of nuclear energy. For nuclear power plants that are planned to be shut down in the short term, find a way to keep them running for a while to get through the tough period. But the most important long-term approach is two points, one is to vigorously develop clean energy. The second is to continue to find ways to improve the efficiency of energy use. The combination of these two points is the key to truly solving European energy problems and energy security issues in the long run.
China's annual installed capacity of wind and solar power is the world's largest. But we can't be complacent, because China's energy consumption is too large, and the proportion of wind energy and solar energy in China's entire energy system is not particularly high. Although some European countries consume less energy than China, their proportion of clean energy is very high.
Nevertheless, China's new energy industry has developed very well. I also believe that China's clean energy equipment manufacturers will have a large international market, and can export their own technologies and equipment to other countries to help these countries achieve a better and faster energy transition.