On April 10, 2020, the website of the National Energy Administration issued an announcement to publicly solicit opinions on the "Energy Law of the People's Republic of China (Consultation Draft)". Since China's first "Energy Law" first publicly solicited opinions from the public at the end of 2007, it once again sought advice after 13 years. This means that the long-enacted energy law is accelerating.

This consultation draft has 11 chapters and 117 articles, covering energy strategy and planning, energy development, processing and conversion, energy supply and use, energy market, energy security, etc. It is worth noting that the draft made specific outlines for the development of rural energy resources in the General Provisions.

According to the draft, the state formulates policies to support rural energy development, increase the supply of clean and high-quality energy in rural areas, and improve the level of energy services in accordance with the principles of coordinating urban and rural areas, adapting to local conditions, multi-energy complementation, comprehensive utilization, and improving services.

The state supports the development of rural energy resources, promotes the use of renewable energy according to local conditions, improves the energy consumption conditions for farmers‘ cooking and heating, improves the efficiency of rural production and living energy consumption, and increases the proportion of clean energy in rural energy consumption.

In the 2013 No. 1 central document, the country first proposed the goal of building "beautiful villages", further strengthening rural ecological construction, environmental protection, and comprehensive improvement. To strengthen ecological construction and environmental protection in rural areas, the most critical and realistic step is to achieve rural clean heating.

Due to the large base population, wide area, and scattered distribution, the housing structure, economic affordability, and resource conditions in different rural areas are quite different, resulting in more rural heating demand and various requirements. Especially in the northern part of China, most of them use bulk coal for heating. Studies have shown that the unit pollutant emission intensity of bulk coal heating can be up to 27 times that of ordinary coal-fired power plants and 15 times that of ordinary industrial boilers. Bulk coal heating has a large total amount and heavy pollution, which has a huge impact on air quality.

The problems exposed by rural heating are the epitome of the contradiction of rural energy use. Rural clean heating transformation is not only to solve the problems of heating, coal removal, and smog management but also the first step related to the future long-term development of the rural area and even China's energy revolution. It is also the method of realizing the construction of "beautiful village" and then "beautiful China".

It can be seen from the consultation draft that the country has made a special statement on rural energy development from the legislative level, reflecting the country's full attention to this problem and its determination to fundamentally resolve the contradiction in rural energy use.

For China Sam Group, which actively follows the development trend of global clean energy and has been deeply involved in the whole natural gas industry chain business for a long time, this provision is significant. All along, in the process of striving to open up the promotion channels of the LNG business, China Sam Group is also constantly exploring the rural clean energy market. The support of national policies will further boost the consolidation and expansion of China Sam Group's clean energy market development, promote China Sam Group to actively introduce advanced technologies, strengthen multiparty cooperation, and make a contribution to the construction of "beautiful village".

Source of professional data for this article: China Energy News