LONGi Chairman and GM Zhong Baoshen has taken part in the 17th annual meeting of the ‘New Champions’ in the Chinese city of Dalian, an event bringing together over 1,700 political, business, academic and innovation leaders from more than 90 countries to engage in dialogues on the global economy, climate action and cutting-edge technologies.
During a roundtable session titled “Follow the Money: Where Climate Capital Is Going,” Zhong shared his perspectives on the decarbonization potential of Solar-Plus-Storage integration and the metrics for measuring the effectiveness of clean energy investments.
Zhong believes that developing renewable energy is not only an urgent necessity for addressing climate change, but also a strategic choice for driving local economic growth and achieving energy independence. Solar and wind power are more widely distributed than oil and gas, and this characteristic enables them to benefit all regions more equitably, effectively enhancing strategic energy autonomy. From the perspectives of energy resilience, security and economic viability, the development of renewable energy is highly advantageous for boosting local economies.
Over the past 15 years, the cost of solar power generation has fallen by more than 90%, driven entirely by technological progress, to which Chinese companies have made tremendous contributions. It is precisely this continuous innovation that has made it possible for renewable energy to benefit the world at large.
Zhong pointed out that the core challenge facing the industry today lies in the bottlenecks to expansion caused by grid integration and absorption, as well as the intermittency of solar power. However, the key variable to break through this bottleneck is maturing—the sharp decline in energy storage costs enables us to build a truly renewable energy system. Through the integration of solar, wind power and energy storage, it has become feasible to rely entirely on renewable energy to support power systems.
Based on this trend, Zhong shared with the attendees LONGi’s development approach of ‘Solar-Plus-Storage Integration’. On the solar front, the company will continue to improve conversion efficiency and reduce costs, while promoting integration with buildings and transportation. On the storage side, the focus is on developing solar-plus-storage integration to effectively store green electricity and dispatch it on demand, ultimately making renewable energy economical, convenient and reliable, capable of meeting living and working needs in any scenario. Realizing this blueprint also requires technological innovation support in areas including power generation forecasting, energy management and grid dispatching. Encouragingly, these fields are thriving globally, and the conditions for large-scale deployment of clean energy as a backbone power source for the grid are becoming increasingly mature.
Beyond technological pathways, how capital and policy can remove barriers to scaled deployment is a more pragmatic issue. Addressing the capital bottlenecks in global renewable energy deployment, Zhong pointed out that differences in financing costs across regions directly affect the speed of clean energy adoption. Therefore, he called on the international community to join forces with insurance institutions, public welfare organizations and other stakeholders to innovate collectively, helping to lower interest rates in high‑financing‑cost regions and enabling renewable energy to truly gain development opportunities locally. He suggested that, in developed areas, granting green energy priority in development, or recognizing its green value so that projects can obtain reasonable returns, would be highly beneficial for clean energy deployment.
China is currently promoting the assumption of carbon reduction responsibilities by relevant parties, which essentially gives green energy priority. From the corporate perspective, LONGi has developed a range of diversified products, including microgrid systems combining solar and energy storage, distributed energy systems equipped with intelligent forecasting and dispatching and solar-based water‑pumping solutions implemented in arid regions of Central Asia and Africa, continuously adapting to the needs of different scenarios.
By clearing the path through technological breakthroughs on the one hand, and removing barriers through capital and policy on the other—advancing on both fronts—the scaled deployment of clean energy can truly accelerate.
