Clean transformation to help thermal power enterprises stand out

As the main force of coal power installation and leading enterprises in power generation industry in China, thermal power listed companies play a leading and exemplary role in low-carbon transformation.

A few days ago, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Public Environmental Research Center (IPE) and Beijing Lvyuan Carbon and Technology Co., Ltd. jointly released the 2022 Report on Performance Evaluation of Low-Carbon Transformation of China's Thermal Power Listed Companies under the Carbon Neutral Target (hereinafter referred to as the "Report"), which is based on the data disclosed in the 2020 annual report of thermal power listed companies, thirty-one listed thermal power companies with more than 30% of thermal power installed capacity were selected as evaluation samples. Focusing on the two themes of asset optimization and transformation of thermal power enterprises and high-quality development of new energy, a low-carbon transformation evaluation system in the 13th Five-Year Plan and the 14th Five-Year Plan and the longer-term two stages was established, and four low-carbon transformation performance rankings were generated: the "13th Five-Year" low-carbon transformation comprehensive performance ranking, the "13th Five-Year" low-carbon transformation special index ranking, the "14th Five-Year" and longer-term low-carbon planning comprehensive performance ranking and the "14th Five-Year" annual progress comprehensive performance ranking.

"Thermal power plays a pivotal role in my country's social and economic development, but at the same time thermal power is the largest carbon emission industry. Its low-carbon transformation is not only related to its own sustainable development, but also related to my country's" double carbon "process." Ma Jun, director of the Public Environmental Research Center (IPE), said that thermal power companies have different paths to achieve low-carbon transformation, and the successful experience is worth learning and promoting, and the bottlenecks and obstacles encountered also need to be studied and solved.

The four rankings analyze the low-carbon transformation path of typical thermal power enterprises from four dimensions. It is not difficult to see that thermal power enterprises have made a solid footprint on the road of low-carbon transformation in recent years.

The "Report" pointed out that in the "13th Five-Year Plan" comprehensive performance evaluation of low-carbon transformation, the scores of listed thermal power companies controlled by the five major power generation groups were higher than those of listed thermal power companies controlled by local power generation groups. And the energy structure of thermal power listed companies at the bottom of the list is basically 100 percent thermal power. In the "14th Five-Year Plan" and more long-term low-carbon planning and annual progress comprehensive performance evaluation, the top companies have committed to increase a high proportion of new energy installations during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period.

Yuan Jiahai, a professor at North China Electric Power University, analyzed that during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, the transformation performance of listed thermal power companies controlled by the five major power generation groups was significantly higher than that of local group holding companies. The future planning ambitions of listed companies with slower transformation processes during the 13th Five-Year Plan period are often more ambitious.

Specifically, in terms of the comprehensive performance of the "13th Five-Year Plan" low-carbon transformation, 6 of the top 10 thermal power listed companies are listed companies controlled by five major power generation groups, namely Jidian, Shanghai Electric Power, Huadian International, and Datang Power Generation, China Electric Power and Huaneng International. As the main force of power generation companies, the five major power generation groups have huge power generation assets and strong financial strength, which have obvious advantages over similar companies. From the perspective of regional distribution, most of the top ten local holding listed companies are located in economically developed provinces and cities such as Shanghai and Guangzhou.

The report shows that the differences in internal and external conditions for different enterprises to implement low-carbon transformation will affect the effectiveness of low-carbon transformation. In general, the central-controlled thermal power listed companies have technical and financial advantages over the local-controlled thermal power listed companies; the thermal power listed companies located in developed provinces have external location advantages over the thermal power listed companies in the central and western provinces.

"The transformation of the entire industry needs to be implemented and completed through individual enterprises. Due to the different understanding and implementation of the 'double carbon' policy, each company has different internal and external conditions such as endowments, capital and talent, resulting in uneven levels and speeds of low-carbon transformation, affecting the overall industry transformation process." Zhang Jieqing, chief representative of the Beijing Representative Office of the Natural Resources Conservation Association (NRDC), said.

Huang Hui, climate and energy project manager of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), believes that from the results of the performance evaluation of the "Report", it can be seen that corporate performance is closely related to the low-carbon structure, and the contribution of clean energy to corporate profits is increasing. Therefore, low-carbon transformation is not only the social responsibility of enterprises, but also a new development opportunity. It is hoped that enterprises can change "passive adjustment" to "active action" and embrace the construction of new power system, which is the foundation of sustainable development of enterprises.