China needs investments in new generation of clean-energy tech after wind and solar boom

Greater capital is required in areas such as energy storage, hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel

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China is already investing heavily in energy storage, but needs to adopt market-based principles to create more incentives for investors. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 4:42pm, 3 Dec 2024

China needs to boost investment in a new generation of clean energy technology including storage, hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel, according to executives speaking at the BloombergNEF Summit in Shanghai.

Huge funding for renewables and electric vehicles has already put the country on the cusp of peaking emissions, years before its own 2030 target. But that has also left supply chains saturated, squeezing company profits and raising international trade tensions.

Companies need to shift their spending away from those now-mature technologies toward areas that still need to scale up and lower costs, according to Alan Chan Ying-lung, chief investment officer at Hong Kong & China Gas Co. The gas distributor known as Towngas is focusing on sustainable aviation fuel, using biofuels to decarbonise a difficult-to-abate sector.

“We need more capital to go to unmet demand instead of going to hotspots that are already fully invested,” Chan said during a panel discussion at the event on Tuesday. “We still need to fill that gap.”

Towngas chief investment officer Alan Chan Ying-lung. Photo: Jonathan Wong

The surge in renewables has also created imbalance in grids dealing with too much solar power in the middle of the day that disappears when the sun sets.