The new turning point of the U.S. new energy policy

The U.S. Department of Energy has stopped guaranteeing renewable energy facilities and released the U.S. signal for the adjustment of renewable energy policies. Has the U.S. developing new energy turned?

On May 9, 2011, the U.S. Department of Energy said it had stopped accepting new applications for solar energy, wind energy, or other renewable energy facilities, and hinted that companies that have submitted applications may not be able to obtain guarantees. The U.S. Department of Energy has so far secured 20 clean energy projects through ** guarantees, with a total amount of more than US$ 18 billion.

The support system for the development of renewable energy in the United States is very complete, and even more comprehensive and systematic than the recognized EU leader in renewable energy. The US support system for renewable energy can be divided into policy level and economic level. The policy level mainly includes various laws and regulations; the economic level mainly includes tax credits, direct subsidies for production and consumption, bonds and guarantees, etc. .

In addition to federal government policy and economic support, the state government also has many subsidies and preferential policies for renewable energy sources, especially California and other places with better resources and economic conditions.

In fact, the U.S. government very much hopes to create new market space for the development of renewable energy through policy support, remove institutional and policy barriers to its development, and industrialize renewable energy technologies through economic support, mobilize investment from all parties and use renewable resources. Energy enthusiasm.

The U.S. Department of Energy's refusal to accept ** guarantee applications for new solar, wind, or other renewable energy facilities cannot be interpreted as an inflection point for the U.S. renewable energy support policy, but it can be seen that U.S. officials have adjusted their attitude toward renewable energy.

The reason why this kind of adjustment appears is that the U.S. government attaches great importance to traditional energy sources. On March 30 this year, the U.S. government released the "Blueprint for Energy Security Future", which will once again raise the status of local traditional fossil energy.

The "Blueprint" believes that the United States should develop local fossil fuels as far as possible. This includes oil and non-traditional oil and gas resources in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, such as shale gas and tight gas. Even Canadian oil sands can be included. .

The United States has very rich oil and gas reserves. According to the data released by the US Geological Survey in 2009, the US Offshore Shelf has up to 115 billion barrels of technically recoverable crude oil reserves and 565 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves. This does not include BP and Chevron's recent discovery in the deep Gulf of Mexico.

In the past two years, the United States has actively encouraged the development and production of domestic oil, natural gas and other resources. Great progress has been made in the extraction of indigenous oil and gas resources. The U.S. government has lifted the ban on local resource extraction on the one hand - Obama announced in March last year that some of the resources were cancelled offshore in the United States. The ban on oil extraction, on the other hand, continues to make breakthroughs in oil and gas exploration technology in the United States in the past two years, enabling the unutilized non-traditional oil and gas resources to be used effectively.

In terms of shale gas extraction, the United States expects that the proportion of shale gas production in total natural gas production will increase from 12% in 2007 to 35% in 2013, and this proportion will further increase to 55% in 2030. Unconventional natural gas The successful development led the United States to leap into the world's largest natural gas producer in 2009, basically achieving self-sufficiency. In 2010, the United States’ domestic oil production reached its highest value since 2003, and the proportion of imported oil in the consumed liquid fuels was lower than 50% for the first time in more than a decade.

Sitting on such a huge reserve of oil and gas resources, the United States naturally does not have to place all its energy security on very expensive renewable energy like the Europeans do. Currently, like the United States and Europe, it is still not completely out of the quagmire of the financial crisis. Government revenue Struggling. Due to financial factors, European countries have recently cut subsidies for various renewable energy sources, and the United States has stopped accepting applications for new solar energy, wind energy, or other renewable energy facilities as an example of European countries’ practices.

At the same time, although the United States has slowed down its domestic support for renewable energy sources, it has taken other measures to seek momentum for the development of its own renewable energy sources through international cooperation. In recent years, the United States has continuously signed renewable energy development cooperation plans with various emerging countries, such as cooperation agreements with countries such as China and India to jointly develop renewable energy. The U.S. move is to use resources and fiscal revenue of emerging countries and the United States. Its own research and development capabilities to jointly develop renewable energy resources can be described as a brilliant development strategy. This has certain implications for China's renewable energy development.