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[21st Century Business Herald] Interview with Bao Xinhe, a member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress: "First stand and then break" to promote the adjustment of energy ......
In September 2020, China made a "double carbon" commitment to the world, after more than a year of efforts, how will China strengthen green technology research in the future, do a good job of energy structure transformation, and better achieve the "double carbon" goal? During the two sessions, Bao Xinhe, member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of the University of Science and Technology of China, suggested in an interview with the 21st Century Business reporter that carbon reduction work should be combined with China's resource endowment, and on the basis of ensuring national energy security, national economic development and people's livelihood. Among them, how to promote the green and low-carbon use of fossil energy, especially coal, is a very important direction.
As one of the key universities in the Yangtze River Delta, the University of Science and Technology of China is also constantly strengthening its linkage with surrounding universities and cities. In April 2021, eight universities in East China, including the University of Science and Technology of China, jointly established the "Yangtze River Delta Sustainable Development University Alliance". Bao Xinhe pointed out that cooperation and exchanges between universities, enterprises and governments within the Yangtze River Delta, as well as regional cooperation and exchanges with the Yangtze River Delta are very important. Universities should take advantage of the Yangtze River Delta to play a leading role in domestic development and future international development.
Some irrational practices have changed
"21st Century" : Traditional energy has come to the "crossroads" of transformation, considering the actual situation of China's energy structure, how to accelerate the reform under the premise of ensuring energy security and economic development?
Bao Xinhe: The promotion of the "dual carbon" goal is an important thing, but in the past, because the local grasp of the policy is not accurate enough, some unreasonable practices have been adopted, and some negative effects have been produced in practice. For example, there was a time when people believed that coal was a relatively high-carbon energy source, and when it came to low-carbon and "dual-carbon" goals, they believed that the use of coal would soon be reduced or even stopped in the future. But in fact, rich coal, poor oil and less gas are China's own resource endowments, according to the data of the National Resources Investigation Bureau, China's proved mining coal reserves now more than 244 billion tons, last year, China's raw coal production of 4.07 billion tons, with the increase in proved quantities, coal resources will play a role in the next 100 years of energy security. Therefore, in the context of "double carbon", how to do a good job of coal in our country and promote the effective use of fossil energy, especially coal, is a very important task. Now everyone's concept has gradually changed, China at this stage still need to focus on coal, first stand up and then break, steadily advance, and finally on the basis of energy security, ensure the development of the national economy and people's livelihood, seriously do a good job of carbon reduction work.
21st Century: This year's government work report has some new deployments of "dual carbon", such as promoting the "dual control" of energy consumption to the "dual control" of carbon emissions and intensity, and so on. How should we understand?
Bao Xinhe: The big goal of carbon reduction cannot be changed. The blind "one-size-fits-all" approach is certainly not right, but it cannot be said that it is completely open and there is no goal, and the "dual control" task is still very heavy. The goal of "double control" is very clear, and some adjustments have been made to the previously unreasonable policies. For example, in the conversion and utilization of coal, some coal is used for burning power generation to produce carbon dioxide, which belongs to the scope of "double control". However, some coal, especially chemical coal, is not directly burned into carbon dioxide, but into chemicals, and this aspect of the indicator has been relaxed. In other words, fossil energy as a resource utilization is not within the control of the index. On the whole, some unreasonable indicators are properly adjusted, but this does not mean that the whole "dual control" indicators are relaxed, if we now engage in "carbon charge", the task of carbon neutrality in the future will be very heavy. Now we must make great efforts to "establish" renewable energy, as soon as possible to adjust China's current energy structure dominated by fossil energy.
Make good use of the Yangtze River Delta
"21st Century" : Under the framework of Yangtze River Delta integration, how to further improve the system and mechanism of innovative scientific research, achieve regional linkage, and open up production, university and research?
Bao Xinhe: The integration of the Yangtze River Delta is an important national strategy. At the same time, the Yangtze River Delta region has developed well in economic and social aspects, including science, education and culture. Therefore, in the future, cooperation and exchanges between universities, enterprises and governments in the Yangtze River Delta region, as well as regional cooperation and exchanges with the Yangtze River Delta region are very important. Among them, universities should take advantage of the advantages of the Yangtze River Delta region to play a leading role in domestic development and future international development.
Since the national strategy of the integration of the Yangtze River Delta was put forward, universities and institutes have made a lot of efforts, among which, in terms of realizing "double carbon", the Yangtze River Delta has also established an alliance. From the perspective of Hefei, Anhui Province, we have been talking about "two hearts to create together", that is, we hope that through the construction of Shanghai Zhangjiang Comprehensive National Science Center and Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, Hefei and Shanghai can interact with each other and create together.
The University of Science and Technology of China has always attached great importance to cooperation and development in the Yangtze River Delta region. We have always adhered to the characteristics of small but fine, and basically have not built branch schools in other places, but in recent years, we have built a number of cooperative research institutions in the Yangtze River Delta. For example, there is the Institute for Advanced Study in Suzhou, the Shanghai Institute and the Quantum Science Center in Shanghai, and the Institute for artificial Intelligence in Deqing, Zhejiang Province. Now, we are also actively participating in the construction of the Pujiang Artificial Intelligence platform and laboratory in Shanghai. As you can see, there are many kinds of cooperation and exchanges, including in personnel training, and we also have some common courses. On April 9 this year, we will also hold the Annual Conference of East China Universities in Hefei to review and exchange ideas on how to use the advantages of the Yangtze River Delta and play a leading role.
The first phase of the Carbon Neutral Research Institute focuses on four major areas
21st Century: In January this year, the Carbon Neutral Research Institute of the University of Science and Technology of China was established. What are the advantages of the University of Science and Technology in carbon neutral research?
Bao Xinhe: The University of Science and Technology of China focuses on basic research and application of high technology, and has done long-term basic research in energy conversion, solar energy, hydrogen energy and other aspects, and has accumulated very profound accumulation. "Dual carbon" is a field with strong application, and USTC also wants to better combine the results and capabilities of basic research with national strategies, and gradually push some results from the laboratory to enterprise or social applications, which is also a very important goal for us.
In this context, the University of Science and Technology of China established the Carbon Neutral Research Institute, and then hoped to integrate the advantageous research work through the system of science and education integration with the Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Carbon neutrality is a long-term goal that will not be achieved until 2060, which is almost 40 years away, so this is a long-term effort.
21st Century: In what ways will the Institute advance research in the future? What key areas of technology need to be broken through?
Bao Xinhe: Combining the characteristics of carbon neutrality and the advantages of basic research at USTC, the Institute has drawn up several major development directions:
One is the efficiency of solar cells. At present, solar cells use more monocrystalline silicon, monocrystalline silicon into solar energy conversion efficiency of about 25%, and a large part of the energy is wasted. At present, our research focuses on laminated batteries, that is, by stacking several battery materials together and then segmenting the energy to better use. We hope to complete the 30% solar energy conversion efficiency in the laboratory as soon as possible through research, and promote it as soon as possible.
The second is energy storage. There are many energy storage methods, chemical energy storage also has a variety of batteries, of which lithium batteries are now developing very well. However, lithium resources are relatively lacking in China, which may restrict the development of lithium batteries in the future. Therefore, from the perspective of the future, replacing lithium with other cheap and easily available substances is a relatively important research direction. Among them, a promising route is to use sodium instead of lithium as sodium batteries, our school has done a very systematic basic research in this regard, and now hope that through the carbon neutral research Institute this platform can achieve the scale of sodium batteries, so that sodium batteries can play a better role in large-scale cheap energy storage.
The third is hydrogen energy. From a sustainability perspective, one of the most important routes may be renewable energy generation, through the electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen, commonly known as "green hydrogen." Alkaline water electrolysis has been used in industrialization for a long time, but its energy efficiency is difficult to improve, and its land area is relatively large. Proton exchange membrane electrolysis technology has recently developed rapidly, for example, the Dalian Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Anhui Sunshine power supply developed the device, the scale of more than 260 kilowatts, has been able to achieve 4.1 degrees of electricity to 1 cubic meter of hydrogen level, but the proton exchange membrane electrolysis device price is relatively high, the main reason is the electrode preparation using precious metals as a catalyst, Second, most of the diaphragms are imported, and the price is relatively high. Therefore, the academic community and industry are more optimistic about alkaline membrane electrolysis technology, this method does not need precious metals as a catalyst, and alkaline membrane research is now basically synchronized with the international, after a lot of research, our current density of alkaline membrane electrolysis water can reach 1.8~2A/cm^2, The efficiency has been able to produce 1 cubic meter of hydrogen with 4.1~4.5 degrees of electricity. The next step is to tackle the key is the ionic conductivity, life and price of alkaline film. At present, the University of Science and Technology in the existing polymer research accumulation, combined with the Chinese Academy of Sciences Dalian Institute of electrolytic catalyst technology, hope to make a breakthrough.
The second is the utilization of hydrogen energy, the hydrogen energy utilization research of the University of Science and Technology is mainly aimed at the urgent areas of the country, such as the carbon reduction demand in the process industry, which is concerned by everyone, that is, the carbon reduction work in the fields of cement manufacturing, steel making and chemical industry. We hope to give full play to the advantages of Hefei Science Island of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Science and Technology of China in the research of high-temperature plasma heating methods for a long time, and combine with low-carbon technologies such as hydrogen energy to synchronize the carbon dioxide generated in the cement manufacturing process into carbon monoxide, which is well coupled with subsequent steelmaking, and adopt the short process of carbon monoxide and hydrogen reduction in steelmaking. You can use less or no coke, thereby reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
The fourth is to give full play to the advantages of USTC management and some interdisciplinary disciplines. In response to the current need for carbon reduction, we have set up a strategic research institute, which is conducting serious research on the entire future energy development strategy, including the evaluation of low-carbon technologies, carbon footprint and technology integration demonstration.
The above aspects are the deployment of the first phase of the carbon neutral Research Institute. Subsequently, we are considering the treatment and utilization of carbon dioxide, the effective use of biomass as an energy source, and the application of AI technology in the future energy Internet.
21st Century: In the study of carbon reduction, what other measures will be taken in terms of professional linkage and school-enterprise integration?
Bao Xinhe: Carbon reduction is a basic, long-term and cross-cutting work, which cannot be completed by one unit. In practice, we make use of the advantages of the integration of science and education of the University of Science and Technology. For example, in the research of alkaline membrane electrolysis of water, there are several teams participating in the university alone, as well as the research team doing electrolytic catalyst research. At the same time, outside the university, we also combine the research forces of Dalian Institute of Chemical Compounds of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and relevant research institutes in Shanghai, who have rich experience in battery fuel and electrolysis.
Moreover, we have also adopted some new institutional mechanisms this time, using enterprises to set questions, "reveal the list" and other methods, so that the carbon neutral research Institute can meet the needs as soon as possible. At present, the institute has reached cooperation or intention with a number of enterprises. Schools and enterprises need to work together to transform the results of the laboratory into applications as soon as possible and make contributions to the country.
(Writing by Yi Jiaying and Bu Yuqin, reporting by Du Hongyu)
21st Century Business Herald March 12, 2022
https://m.21jingji.com/article/20220312/43fb115fcdbbb9bff18c3cb9f22f3cb9.html
