As the proportion of installed new energy capacity continues to rise, the industry faces multiple challenges, including growing difficulties in project integration and increasing economic pressures. Particularly as China enters the critical deepening period of its national green transition during the "15th Five-Year Plan," promoting high-quality development of new energy amidst various pressures has become a major focus for the entire sector. In a recent report discussing the integration of traditional and new energy, Yang Liqiang, Deputy Chief Engineer of PetroChina Company Limited and Executive Director and Party Committee Secretary of its Oil, Gas & New Energy Company, offered targeted insights based on new requirements and the company's strategic shift towards new energy.
Regarding the relationship between traditional energy sources like oil and gas and new energy in the context of building a strong energy nation, Yang Liqiang stated that energy security is a crucial pillar for comprehensively building a modern socialist country. Currently, China is in a critical period of green and low-carbon energy transformation, necessitating the establishment of a new energy system that gradually shifts from coal-dominance to new energy-dominance. During this transition, fossil fuels will remain the mainstay of energy supply for some time. Therefore, traditional and new energy are not simply substitutes but complementary forces that develop synergistically.
On one hand, it is essential to maintain a measured pace, ensuring stability before making changes. As the world's largest energy consumer, the stable supply of oil and gas is fundamental to China's economic and social development, especially before new energy can provide a stable and reliable supply capacity. Given that China's reliance on imported oil and gas remains unchanged, exploration and development efforts must not be reduced. The development of new energy must be grounded in energy security, avoiding rash decarbonization campaigns or impractical haste. The orderly phase-out of traditional energy should be based on the safe and reliable replacement by new energy, ensuring a smooth transition in supply.
On the other hand, it is vital to promote the integrated development of traditional and new energy. Oil and gas naturally complement new energy. PetroChina is actively advancing this integration. For instance, its oil and gas fields are predominantly located in the vast northern, northeastern, and northwestern regions, which offer advantages in land and renewable resources, providing a solid foundation for building large-scale wind and solar power bases. Furthermore, PetroChina's annual electricity consumption for production is approximately 70 billion kWh. The company is actively promoting a "green power direct supply" model, using wind and solar power to directly drive oil and gas production. This approach reduces carbon emissions and facilitates local consumption of new energy, effectively overcoming development bottlenecks.
Regarding how oil companies can develop new energy without blindly following trends or sticking to outdated ways, thus successfully pursuing a coordinated multi-energy complementary path, Yang Liqiang emphasized the importance of identifying new energy's unique role within the national energy strategy and industrial chain. By leveraging PetroChina's comparative advantages, the company can forge a path of integrated development suited to local conditions.
First, prioritize profitable development to ensure the new energy business can sustain itself. Profitability is the lifeline for the long-term stability of new energy operations. Economic benefits must be a prerequisite for new energy projects, with strict investment decisions, economic evaluations, and risk controls to maximize investment returns and lifecycle benefits.
Second, emphasize large-scale development, using major bases and projects to support a multi-energy complementary structure. The new energy industry exhibits significant economies of scale. PetroChina is accelerating the construction of large-scale wind and solar power bases in desert and Gobi areas in regions like Xinjiang and Qinghai. These large-scale projects are deeply integrated with oil and gas operations, addressing both the challenge of new energy integration and helping traditional industries reduce costs and carbon emissions.
Third, focus on distinctive development by leveraging comparative advantages to avoid homogeneous competition. Oil companies possess unique application scenarios and a solid industrial foundation for developing new energy. This includes utilizing petroleum engineering expertise to make breakthroughs in specialized areas like geothermal development, underground energy storage, and CCUS, building differentiated technological competitiveness. It also involves making full use of land resources in mining areas, well sites, and stations to develop distributed photovoltaic power, enabling clean energy substitution for oil and gas production. Finally, enhancing application innovation by offering regional one-stop comprehensive energy services leveraging new energy bases and transmission channels can drive synergistic development of businesses like natural gas sales, charging piles, and green power.
As a emerging force in new energy development, PetroChina has demonstrated remarkable performance in this sector. A signed article by Dai Houliang, Chairman and Party Committee Secretary of PetroChina Company Limited, in September 2025 noted that since the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, PetroChina has incorporated "green and low-carbon" into its core development strategy, actively revolutionizing its production model. The company is advancing a three-step deployment—"clean replacement, strategic succession, and green transformation"—forming an overall layout encompassing "oil, gas, thermal, electricity, and hydrogen." Cumulative installed capacity of wind and solar power has exceeded 20 GW, geothermal heating coverage surpasses 90 million square meters, and new energy development and utilization capacity accounts for 7% of the company's domestic energy supply, establishing it as a significant contributor to green, low-carbon industrial development among central state-owned enterprises and a key provider of clean, low-carbon energy.
According to statistics, PetroChina's pace of layout in the new energy sector has noticeably accelerated since 2022. From 2022 to 2025, the scale of wind and solar construction indicators obtained annually was 1.62 GW, 9.42 GW, 2.13 GW, and 5.58 GW, respectively. Particularly in 2025, PetroChina alone secured 2.26 GW of wind power indicators, a nearly 130% increase compared to 2024, successfully ranking among the top 10 project owners with outstanding performance.
In 2025, Dai Houliang also publicly stated that PetroChina aims for new energy to constitute 7% of its production capacity by 2025, to achieve a tripartite balance with oil and gas by 2035, and for new energy to account for half of the total volume by around 2050. The goal of "building a green PetroChina" is gradually becoming a reality.
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