Throughout the history of human development, every industrial revolution change in the social forms has been led by the energy revolution from biomass energy to coal and oil, from steam power to internal combustion engines, to electricity.

At present, the human society is at the key transition period of transforming from the fourth industrial revolution represented by the Internet, to the Fifth Industrial Revolution represented by artificial intelligence. A large number of new machines are replacing simple, repetitive jobs that have previously been done by people, which cannot do without the drive of new energy revolution. The primary task of the new energy revolution should be to maximize the introduction of low-carbon, zero-carbon, and renewable energy in the most economical way. The energy crisis taking place in the 1970s spurred people to explore new alternative energy, and the subsequent environmental pollution and extreme climate change have also caused widespread concern about fossil energy. A major drop in the cost of renewable energy, such as wind power and solar energy, has given people the confidence to replace fossil fuels. In this sense, zero-carbon development is not only the only way of the new industrial revolution, but also its value. Thus, the Paris Agreement became a global consensus and concerted action.

The key to achieving zero-carbon development is electric power. Electricity has incomparable features: All kinds of energy can be converted into electric energy, and then converted into other energy; it travels at the speed of light; and transmission medium can be both wired and wireless. The core of the new energy revolution is to establish a set of multi-energy conversion energy system with electricity as its center, introduce low-carbon renewable energy in the most economical way, and turn discrete energy to be uniform and continuous through the Internet information and intelligent control.

As a responsible great power, China should take the initiative to assume the responsibility of coping with global climate change and realizing zero-carbon development, which is very necessary. From the point of view of economic development, it is of great practical significance to offset carbon sources by means of green energy substitution, carbon trading and ecological carbon sequestration compensation.

Fortunately, China has more confidence and strength in zero-carbon development than ever before. Take the field of renewable energy represented by photovoltaic for example, the innovation drive made the overall power generation costs decrease geometrically, with electricity cost reduced to 0.5 Yuan/kWh, and the scope of market application expanded year after year. The cumulative installed capacity of photovoltaic in China exceeded 100 GW, ranking first in the world. The decrease of energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP grew beyond any expectations. Nevertheless, the supporting system of China's zero-carbon development is far from complete. Although wind power and PV power generation have obvious advantages and see a sharp decline in cost, they still have some natural disadvantages, such as non-all-weather, random, intermittent and low energy density, which greatly increase the difficulty of power grid voltage and power control. The fundamental way to solve the problem is to build an energy Internet based on intelligent control system. In addition, the basic production system with low energy consumption and zero pollution is still not formed in the production side, the zero-carbon standards of production should be promoted, and the trading mechanism of carbon emission rights should be perfected.

What's more, the essence of zero-carbon development is "sharing development". We need to strengthen the education of zero-carbon and popularize zero-carbon knowledge to realize the common participation of all the people and change living habits together. Only the joint efforts of the whole people to achieve zero-carbon development can "zero-carbon" results benefit the whole of China, and even all mankind. (By President of Yingli Holdings)