World power: Why China’s State Grid is charged up over global interconnection dream
State Grid Corporation is pushing for regional and intercontinental interconnection of power grids in the next few decades, despite the challenges to the grand vision to enable more efficient and environment-friendly energy consumption.
The vision, if realised, would bring ample opportunities for China to export its ultra-high voltage (UHV) power distribution technology and equipment amid the economic slowdown, and complement President Xi Jinping’s “One Belt One Road” strategy.
It could also see 80 per cent of the world’s energy consumption generated from clean energy by 2050, and a reduction of global carbon dioxide emission by half from 1990 levels so that global temperature rise can be controlled within two degrees centigrade and climate change averted.
This is according to State Grid chairman Liu Zhenya, who conceded selling the idea to the whole world is not easy.
“Someone in the United States had told me that the idea of global energy interconnection will not work because the US power grid system is different,” Liu told delegates of a forum in Hong Kong it organises to promote the vision.
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“But technically, global interconnection is no longer a problem, we just need to upgrade our infrastructure ... in the future, nobody can resist the lure of imported interconnectivity-enabled cheaper electricity.”