The Global Cleantech Summit 2016 was organized in Beijing by the Climate Group on March 23rd and 24th. Shu Hua, the Vice President of GCL group and President of GCL System Integration Technology Co., Ltd., was invited to meet Jeremy Rifkin, the founder of the Foundation on Economic Trends and author of bestseller The Third Industrial Revolution, to discuss the role of clean tech in boosting industrial revolution, and GCL's transformation from energy manufacturing to energy service.

 

GCL's readiness to transform from manufacturing to service

 

"The five prominent elements in Rifkin's The Third Industrial Revolution, including transformation of renewable energy, distributed manufacturing, new storing methods, the energy internet and zero-emission transport, were the exactly ones that the GCL group persisted in and practiced on," Shu said.

 

GCL group, as a private power-generation business with renewable energy, is the largest manufacturer of solar materials in the world. With the installed capacity being over 10 million kW in China, and clean energy production combined with the current energy internet, GCL group has become a distinctive supply center of green energy.

 

He revealed renewable energy focusing on photovoltaic tech was largely applied by GCL group; besides, the GCL group were exploring the mode of integrated application by complements of multiple clean energies based on the smart grid to improve the efficiency of manufacturing and consuming of energy for urban, industrial, commercial and civil use.

 

GCL group has been committed to the smart traffic system and developed a profit model integrating electric automobiles, charging piles, parking lots, energy storage, media, time-sharing rent, cloud platform and finance, accelerating the transformation from manufacturing to service.

 

With regard to this, Rifkin said clean energy would play an increasingly important boosting role in the third industrial revolution with horizontal and flat development trends and features of interconnection, communication and transparency. He also acknowledged GCL's digital reform in smart traffic system and distributed photovoltaic tech.

 

"Zero Marginal Cost" of energy consumption

 

As Rifkin spoke, now China and the U.S. are talking about the Sharing Economy; in fact, almost everyone has an analysis tool for computing the big data of "Internet+", like the smart phone, which costs little. This means each company possesses low-cost tech to improve its productivity, which will largely reduce the marginal cost. In Europe, clean energy tech with zero marginal cost is being used, and power generated by distributed solar energy is fed to the grid by most European countries nearly at no cost.  

 

As to the zero marginal cost, Shu expressed that the government encouraged launching a new energy layout, especially in promotion of distributed energy; and the State Grid began to license regional electricity-selling during which independent power manufacturers and sellers were expected to emerge. China had made substantial progress in distributed generation, as had GCL group.

 

During the discussions, Shu said, "we would build a new clean-energy world woven by big data, internet, cloud platform and intelligent micro grid, and we would make green energy available for numerous households through multi-element creation and energy-efficient ways."

 

Shu mentioned that in the broad context of energy developing, we strongly held that with tech innovation and updating, as well as the establishment of the energy internet, GCL would continue to boost global energy production, consumption and revolution.