Carbon Baseline held an seminar on the theme of “Reform, Development, and Transformation of Power Enterprises”for Lishui Hydro & Power (Hunan Lishui Hydro & Power Co., Ltd).

Established by the Ministry of Water Resources and the Hunan Government, Lishui Hydro & Power is the first basin reclamation and management enterprise in China. The company has developed and constructed five comprehensive water conservancy hub projects. It has built the backbone project system for flood control and made significant contributions to the social and economic development of the Lishui river basin. As of now, the total installed capacity of clean energy built and under construction exceeds 850 MW, with an annual design capacity of about 1.9 billion kW·h and a total fixed asset of 10 billion RMB.During the seminar, Rui Shan, co-founder & CTO of Carbon Baseline, explained how Carbon Baseline would hope to bring inspiration to companies in the process of market reform. Meanwhile, he gave detailed presentation on the potential and technologies of renewable energy. Combining data from certain mature market in the U.S., he analyzed electricity market and the hydropower in the market, as well as carbon trading markets and green power markets.

Renewable energy resources are abundant in China, yet not balanced. Carbon Baseline uses the capacity factor as an indicator of the economics of resource development, and visualizes the resource potential of onshore wind power and photovoltaic power generation across the country, by screening indicators such as land planning and land slope. According to the visualization chart, Shan Rui introduced that if not considering other constraints, China can generate about 12,900-15,000 TWh per year from wind power, and 3,100-5,200 TWh from PV. Although wind power and PV energy can complement each other to a certain extent, they still fail to match in every aspects.

With the synergy of market and technology, in the future, the cost of photovoltaic wind power will continue to drop, probably even to 7 cents per electricity. In this context, Carbon Baseline analyzes related energy storage systems. Wind and PV energy are contributors to the development of carbon neutrality, while battery energy storage will neutralize the volatility problem of wind and PV energy. In intra-day and short-term applications, lithium batteries will have a significant price advantage, which is dominating.

However, it is difficult to compensate for the seasonal fluctuations of wind and PV because batteries are difficult to act as a large energy storage medium. In this regard, the emerging pumped-storage technology is an appropriate alternative. The emerging pumped-storage technology is more flexible in terms of deployment location. It can be deployed modularly, and has less negative environmental impact, provides room for cost reduction.

Additionally, Carbon Baseline made a comprehensive analysis of the respective advantages and disadvantages of gravity energy storage, liquefied compressed air, liquid flow batteries and thermal energy storage.

By studying the case of the U.S. market, we can see that electricity marketization and low carbonization will reduce the operating cost of system power generation, promote the emission reduction effect of carbon price, eliminate outdated capacity in an orderly manner whilst encouraging emerging technologies. At present, China's electricity marketization is gradually advancing. Meanwhile, hydropower and renewable energy companies can profit from carbon trading.

Carbon Baseline provide services related to carbon assets. Based on the framework of Chinese Certified Emission Reduction (CCER), Carbon Baseline is able to help companies identify the emission reduction potential of existing or new technologies/projects, as well as applying for carbon credits through regulators. Carbon Baseline can also connect nation-wide and international buyers and sellers of carbon credits or related financial intermediaries, to further facilitate the transactions of clients in an efficient and cost-effective manner. 

Carbon Baseline is committed to helping our clients solve their most urgent challenges encountered along the path of realizing sustainability goals. With our global vision and industry experience, we provide our clients with a full life-cycle solution from climate change strategy planning to implementation.