Multiple Measures to Promote High-Quality Development of the New Energy Storage Industry

National People’s Congress Deputy and Hefei Guoxuan Machining Engineering Center Director Yao Jinjian

This year’s two sessions, National People’s Congress Deputy and Hefei Guoxuan High-Tech Power Energy Co., Ltd. (referred to as “Hefei Guoxuan”) Machining Engineering Center Director Yao Jinjian continued to focus on industry development and proposed suggestions for promoting high-quality development of the new energy storage industry.

“New energy storage is a core support for building a new energy system in China. It is strategically significant for ensuring the safety of the new power system, promoting low-carbon energy transformation, and serving the ‘dual carbon’ goals,” Yao Jinjian told Securities Times reporters. Currently, China’s new energy storage industry is globally leading in comprehensive strength, with a complete industrial chain formed. Storage batteries account for over 70% of global production, and the localization rate of core materials has reached 95%. However, after entering the scale development stage, deep-seated contradictions have become prominent.

To promote high-quality industry development, Yao Jinjian put forward specific suggestions in five areas.

In terms of technological innovation, Yao Jinjian recommends focusing on core needs such as high safety, low cost, long lifespan, and large capacity. He suggests integrating national innovation resources, promoting leading enterprises to build innovation platforms with universities and research institutes, and concentrating efforts on key areas like solid-state battery electrolytes. Additionally, digitalization, intelligent transformation, and smart manufacturing upgrades should be promoted to upgrade energy storage equipment from “qualified and up to standard” to “high quality and efficiency.” Furthermore, he recommends accelerating the layout of frontier technologies such as sodium-ion batteries to build a diversified energy storage technology system compatible with the new power system.

Regarding market mechanism issues, Yao Jinjian suggests improving the market-based pricing formation mechanism, establishing a unified national capacity compensation standard with differentiation, and promoting comprehensive participation of energy storage in medium- and long-term, spot, and ancillary service markets. He also advocates for the promotion of new business models like shared energy storage, optimizing fiscal and tax support policies, and guiding social capital from “blind influx” to “rational investment,” to curb vicious price competition.

In terms of industrial ecological layout, Yao Jinjian recommends tailoring the industrial layout based on regional resource endowments and development needs to build a differentiated and collaborative industry structure. Specifically, the eastern region should focus on high-end R&D, core equipment manufacturing, and globalization; central and western regions should develop equipment manufacturing and recycling industries for waste batteries, increasing support for industrial transfer, and establishing a complete recycling system for energy storage batteries throughout their lifecycle to address the shortcomings of “heavy production, light recycling” and “heavy scale, light coordination.”

On the global industrialization front, Yao Jinjian suggests supporting leading enterprises to expand overseas markets, promoting a “technology export + localized production” model, and providing support such as export credit insurance premium discounts and low-interest loans from the China Development Bank. Meanwhile, efforts should be made to align China’s energy storage product and technology standards with international standards, establish overseas investment risk warning platforms, and help enterprises avoid overseas operational risks.

In Yao Jinjian’s view, risk prevention and control in the new energy storage industry cannot be overlooked. He recommends guiding insurance institutions, energy storage companies, and industry associations to collaboratively develop insurance products tailored to the energy storage industry, covering quality performance, safety, operation and maintenance, etc. Projects that purchase such dedicated insurance should receive premium subsidies, promoting deep integration of insurance and industry to build a solid risk defense for healthy industry development.

(Reporter Ye Lingzhen, Securities Times)