According to the “Outline of the New Development Strategy” of the Company announced in October 2021, the Company has taken “Lower Carbon Empower Better Life” as its mission, aiming to achieve the vision of becoming a “World-class Green and Low-carbon Energy Provider”. The Company will stay committed to green, innovative and high-quality development with a focus on promoting sustainable and rapid development of clean and low carbon energy such as photovoltaic power, wind power, hydropower, geothermal energy and biomass energy. Proactive efforts have been made to nurture emerging industries of green energy, including energy storage, green power transportation, colored photovoltaic and integrated intelligent energy, optimize and reduce existing coal-fired power assets comprehensively, as well as increase the proportion of clean energy installed capacity at a faster pace so as to realize the “dual wheel drive” of clean and low carbon energy and emerging industries of green energy, thereby building a new energy ecosystem to facilitate the green and low carbon transformation of the economy and the society.
In 2022, the Company completed the acquisition of clean energy assets with a capacity of approximately 2.5GW from its parent companies so as to further implement the Company’s strategy to vigorously develop clean energy and promote the continuous enhancement of its asset structure and profitability. In the future, the Company will capitalize on the support from its parent companies to continue to acquire clean energy assets and projects from independent third parties or its parent companies, as and when appropriate, and at the same time identify other quality clean energy assets and projects for development with a view to creating more value for its shareholders and to achieve the goals under its new development strategy.
The Company announced its revised dividend policy in January 2019, which increased the amount of dividends from not less than 25% of the profit attributable to equity holders of the Company to not less than 50% of the profit attributable to equity holders of the Company. The Company will strictly implement the dividend policy, and determine the amount of dividends to be distributed based on actual operating performance for a given year.
In 2023, the China Electricity Council anticipated that the national total electricity consumption will remain in equilibrium as a whole with a year-on-year increase of approximately 6%. In order to achieve the goals of “Carbon Emissions Peak and Carbon Neutrality”, we will accelerate the construction of new power systems and further increase the growth rate of installed capacity and power generation capacity of clean energy, while thermal power will be facing a major transition from baseload power source to regulated power source.
Under the goals of “Carbon Emissions Peak and Carbon Neutrality”, energy storage technology is an integral aspect for the construction of new energy-oriented novel power systems, and can be applied to all aspects of power systems including power generation, transmission and distribution. In 2022, local governments of various regions in the PRC promulgated policies and standards which mandates wind and photovoltaic power stations to be equipped with energy storage facilities, which have played an important role in supporting the development of the industry. It is expected that with the growth in demand driven by the construction of large bases for wind and photovoltaic power, the energy storage industry of the country will soon enter a new era of rapid development.
The Company pays high regards to the development opportunities arising from the energy storage industry. Apart from providing EPC services to energy storage power stations, the Company has been planning the layout in aspects such as electrochemical energy storage, compressed air energy storage and pumped storage hydropower, and has accomplished initial achievements. Going forward, the Company will create new profit growth drivers through the energy storage segment in an effort to bring better returns to all shareholders.
The Directors and management attaches great importance to ESG and believe that ESG is of utmost importance to the future development of the Company. The Company has recently established the Strategic and Sustainable Development Committee under the Board to lead the ESG development of the Company and report to the Board on a timely basis. Meanwhile, the Company also plans to establish an ESG office, which specializes in handling ESG-related works, and to plan and implement the ESG aspirations of the executive Directors and members of management.