At the beginning of the new year, the National Energy Administration issued the "Key Points for Energy Regulation in 2023", clarifying the overall ideas and main tasks for energy regulation in 2023. It specifically proposes seven requirements and deployments: focusing on market regulation, safety regulation, industry regulation, monopoly regulation, qualification credit regulation, administrative law enforcement, and party building leadership. The work points are comprehensive and pragmatic, fully reflecting the determination and responsibility of the country to carry out more vigorous, comprehensive, deep-seated, and higher-level regulatory work in the field of energy in the new year. The document will raise the regulatory work of power market system construction to a new height.

Accelerating the construction of a unified national power market system, establishing a sound electricity spot market, and jointly playing a role in discovering electricity commodity prices with the medium- and long-term markets is conducive to wind power winning a larger market share with its advantage of low marginal cost and continuously improving integration ratio. However, due to the inadequate power market system in China, the market has not truly played a decisive role in resource allocation. Local improper intervention in the market is frequently seen, such as forcing companies to participate in so-called market transactions by compressing guaranteed hours, or illegally suppressing wind power generation and prices in the name of market transactions, and forcing wind power projects to configure energy storage. The document proposes accelerating the construction of a unified national power market system, fully utilizing the role of power market mechanisms, and deepening the order supervision of the power market system. These three specific contents focus on systemic problems facing the current industry development and are of great significance for power market reform and the construction of new power systems.

Among them, the construction of regional power markets, direct power trading, ancillary service market mechanisms, improper local interventions, and power spot trading orders are all core issues that the document mentions one by one and clarifies the work direction and supervision points. The document clarifies the concept of "industry regulation" and further strengthens the supervision of the implementation of major national energy planning, policies, and projects. For a long time, the delayed construction of transmission engineering has been the key factor affecting wind power grid connection and integration. In the "Three North" region, the power grid infrastructure in areas suitable for large-scale development of clean energy is weak, and the ability to transmit power externally is limited, resulting in slow development of clean energy and tremendous waste of resources. At present, the large-scale supporting transmission engineering for new energy construction lags behind, and the asynchronous construction of new energy units and supporting transmission engineering seriously affects the grid connection and integration of new energy, which in turn restricts the development of the new energy industry.

To solve this problem, the document proposes further increasing the regulation of renewable energy consumption, establishing a normalized regulatory work mechanism, urging progress, correcting deviations in a timely manner, and continuously tracking the progress of major projects such as cross-provincial and cross-regional transmission channels, large-scale wind and photovoltaic bases, power generation, transmission, distribution and storage integration, and multi-energy supplement. This is very necessary to ensure the orderly promotion of key planning policies and projects according to the original policy design.

The document provides detailed and meticulous arrangements for preventing and resolving power safety risks, and strengthens supervision. In recent years, China's wind power has maintained rapid and large-scale development, and technology has rapidly iterated. The trend of large-scale wind power units is obvious, and new technologies and applications continue to emerge, posing higher requirements on construction, installation, and operation and maintenance. However, due to factors such as non-standardized operation by personnel during construction and operation and maintenance, safety accidents frequently occur, which is not conducive to the long-term healthy development of the wind power industry. Such accidents warn us that safety is the lifeline of the wind power industry, and it is necessary to strengthen supervision before, during, and after accidents.

To this end, the document specifically mentions improving the safety management level of power engineering construction sites, strengthening inspections of thermal power, new energy, pumped storage, energy storage power stations, important transmission and transformation projects, etc., standardizing the supervision of power engineering construction quality, and focusing on preventing and restricting major construction safety accidents. The document also mentions in the subsequent sections of power market access and qualification credit supervision that the function of licenses should be strengthened and the license management of hydroelectric, wind power, photovoltaic, and other power generation projects and related network engineering construction enterprises should be improved. This is crucial for regulating the construction and development market order of the new energy industry, maintaining the industry's good image, and promoting the healthy development of the industry. In addition, the document also mentions implementing the regulatory bodies for new businesses such as offshore wind power, forming a working system in which the central and local governments work together to govern, and other aspects such as the supervision of natural monopolies, administrative law enforcement, and regulatory team and capacity building with detailed task plans.

2023 is a year of continuity and innovation from the "13th Five-Year Plan" to the "14th Five-Year Plan". The energy regulatory work in 2023 specifically addresses core issues, focuses on key weak links, proposes detailed arrangements, responds to common concerns, shows full determination, and gives the industry more confidence. We have reason to believe that under the effective and efficient supervision and inspection of the country, China's energy and power industry will achieve higher quality development.