Clean energy efforts gather momentum

The company has also achieved success in power connections in countries and regions involved in the Belt and Road Initiative while eyeing further inroads in the future, it said.

Xu Xiaodong, deputy head of the China Electric Power Planning & Engineering Institute, said earlier that China has been shifting toward a cleaner energy mix, while studying advanced clean energy technologies like high-voltage direct-current transmission.

According to Joseph Jacobelli, an independent energy analyst and Asia-Pacific CEO of clean energy producer Joule Power, State Grid has accumulated investment knowledge from its many projects in various continents in the past few years and has the strength to help other nations build their grid networks.

Jacobelli said China's advantage in UHV direct current power transmission has substantial potential in countries and regions participating in the Belt and Road Initiative, helping ease the challenges of long distances between suppliers and customers in Brazil, which has been working on transmitting electricity from hydropower stations in the Amazon region in the north to areas with huge demand, such as the southern states of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

This is similar to China, which also has a vast territory with energy consumption centers far from resources, he said.

Analysts said one industry that could benefit enormously from the Belt and Road Initiative is clean energy technologies, as Beijing has been focusing on investment in advanced technologies, especially clean energy technology.

According to Jacobelli, there is tremendous potential for energy cooperation between China and other BRI-related economies, with massive opportunities in the fields of solar, hydro, nuclear and wind power.

Replacing the polluting coal with more clean energy has been gaining ground over the past few years, and this trend is likely to remain in the short to medium term. The key implications for industry participants from the shift away from coal has been an acceleration in the construction of renewable energy facilities, he said.

Chinese clean energy companies, with their wide-ranging know-how and experience, in fields including hydroelectric plants, which are second to none, have been expanding their presence overseas, while the Chinese companies' cost-control abilities also provide advantages in exploring clean energy markets abroad, he added.

According to the Brookings Institute, China will invest more than $6 trillion in low-carbon power generation and other clean energy technologies over the next 20 years, as global energy demand is expected to rise 30 percent by 2040 with investments in new power generation capacity expanding to $10.2 trillion.

The majority of that investment - nearly $7.4 trillion - will be in renewable energy generating capacity, it said.

China has already made substantial progress in renewable energy in recent years, investing heavily in both solar panel manufacturing, the carbon market, nuclear power plant construction and electric vehicles.

Li Li, energy research director at ICIS China, a think tank focusing on the energy trend, believes even as fossil fuels, including coal, oil and gas, will still be the dominant energy resource in the upcoming few decades, the country's ambitions could reshape the global energy equation.

The scale of China's clean energy investment, according to the International Energy Agency, is key to the momentum now driving low-carbon energy technologies.

China now has one-third of the world's wind power, four of the top 10 wind turbine makers, six of the top 10 solar panel manufacturers, and a quarter of the world's solar capacity, said the agency.