30-60 carbon targets provide new opportunities for China’s pumped storage development

With the large-scale development of wind power and solar PV, the government proposes to build a new-type power system with new energy as the main body. Among the flexible green resources of the power system, pumped storage has the advantage of maturity in technology, is economically optimal, and has the greatest potential for large-scale development. The development of the pumped storage industry will be accelerated in an all-around way starting from the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025).

In the meantime, the National Energy Administration (NEA) launched a new round of site selection for pumped storage projects and based on this, proposed the installation targets for 2025 and 2030, as well as a list of medium and long term project development. The pricing department of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has also further improved the price mechanism for pumped storage to make full preparations for it to participate in the power market.