Adnan Amin Opening Keynote 2026 New Power System Development Chongli Forum
As prepared for delivery at the Opening Address of the 2026 “New Power System Development Forum” in Chongli, China.
Excellencies, Distinguished Leaders, Colleagues and Friends,
Good morning. It is a great pleasure to join you here in Chongli.
My sincere thanks to Dr. Yang Kun and the China Electricity Council for the invitation, and to the Organizing Committee for bringing together such a distinguished community of leaders from China and around the world.
I have had the opportunity to work with many of you over the years. But this is my first major visit to China as Chair of the World Energy Council, and I am glad it begins here.
Chongli is a fitting place for this conversation. Four years ago, the Beijing Winter Olympics became the first Games with every venue powered by clean electricity, much of it generated here in Zhangjiakou and carried to Beijing on a flexible DC grid.
The lesson from Chongli is clear: clean power becomes reliable power when generation, grids and demand are planned together.
And that lesson is now at the center of the global energy agenda. Ladies and gentlemen,
We are entering the age of electricity. Since 2007, electricity has been the world’s largest source of useful energy, ahead of oil, and it now supplies around a third of the total.
Last year, clean power met all growth in global electricity demand for the first time. Since 2010, the cost of solar power has fallen by close to 90% and the cost of batteries by more than 90%. Three in four people on Earth can now get round-the-clock power, mostly from solar and batteries, for under USD 100 a megawatt-hour.
These are remarkable achievements. But the context has changed.
Energy security is again at the top of the policy agenda. The continuing disruption of energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz has reminded every importing economy how quickly shocks travel through supply chains and prices. Affordability has become a defining social and political concern. Industrial competitiveness is a strategic priority.
At the same time, demand for electricity is rising faster than anyone expected. Data centers, AI, electric vehicles, heat pumps and advanced manufacturing are all drawing on the same grids.
APEC energy ministers, meeting in Beijing earlier this month, captured this shift well. Energy security has not disappeared; its architecture has expanded. And digital infrastructure and energy infrastructure can no longer be planned separately.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Nowhere is this new electricity era more visible than in China.
Earlier this month, the National Energy Administration confirmed that China’s solar capacity – at 1,286 gigawatts – has overtaken coal to become the country’s largest source of power by installed capacity.
In the first half of this year, coal’s share of generation fell below half for the first time. So far this year, solar has supplied more than one in every eight units of electricity China consumes.
The scale is extraordinary. China produces a third of the world’s electricity and more than 40% of its wind and solar generation. It accounts for nearly half of installed grid batteries and more than 60% of global electric car sales. And since 2010, China has more than doubled its electricity supply.
Speed matters as much as scale. In China, an extra-high-voltage transmission line is typically delivered in two to three years. In many other major economies, it can take more than a decade.
What stands out most is the combination. China is one of very few countries electrifying and digitalizing its economy at the same time – in industry, in buildings and in mobility, with near-universal smart metering and the world’s second-largest fleet of AI data centers.
China is also clear about the work ahead. Since capacity is not the same as generation, the task now is to make solar increasingly dispatchable and predictable, and to turn unprecedented capacity into reliable, affordable and resilient system performance.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The challenge of the last decade was deployment. The challenge ahead is increasingly about integration.
Grids, generation, storage, flexibility, digital systems and increasingly active consumers must evolve together. Worldwide, close to 3,000 gigawatts of projects are waiting in grid connection queues.
The World Energy Council’s World Energy Issues Monitor from earlier this year found that power grids and grid expansion are now the top action priority for energy leaders worldwide.
And our new report, “Rebalancing World Energy: Trade-Offs and Transformations,” launching this week, shows why.
Recent disruptions to energy flows, alongside rapidly growing demand from digital infrastructure, are pushing leaders to continually reassess energy security, equity and environmental sustainability as circumstances evolve. We call this “rebalancing.”
At the same time, the energy equation is getting bigger. Leaders must now deliver security, affordability, sustainability, resilience, competitiveness and development in parallel.
This is an “and-and” agenda, and it requires energy systems designed to advance multiple objectives together.
This is where China’s experience matters globally. China is testing, at exceptional scale, what it takes to integrate renewables, run a digital grid, electrify transport and industry, and plan computing and power together.
That experience deserves to be shared widely. And the exchange should run both ways. Countries across Africa, the Americas, the Middle East, Europe and Asia are pursuing very different pathways under very different conditions. Each has lessons to offer.
Ladies and gentlemen,
That exchange is what the World Energy Council exists to enable.
The Council was founded in 1923, and China is recorded among its founding members. Ever since, we have provided a neutral platform where governments, businesses, researchers, investors and innovators can engage openly across all energy sources and regions.
In a fragmented world, that role becomes more valuable: an infrastructure of trust, independent and impartial.
Our partnership with China has grown significantly in recent years. The China Electricity Council has become one of the most active communities in our global network, recognized last year in Panama with our Building Active Communities Award. State Grid and China Southern Power Grid now bring their system expertise to the Council as Global Patrons.
We aim to build on that foundation, so that China contributes not only to our
activities, but increasingly to the Council’s thinking, insights and leadership.
Ladies and gentlemen,
This journey continues at the 27th World Energy Congress in Riyadh, in April of next year, under the theme “Inspiring Transformations, Delivering Transitions.”
The Congress will bring together thousands of leaders from government, business, finance, technology and academia around one practical question: what will it take to make the next energy system work?
China has a great deal to say on that question. At our last Congress in Rotterdam, China brought the largest national pavilion and a delegation of more than 200. I hope we can build further on that in Riyadh, and broaden it.
I invite China’s full energy ecosystem to join us: the power utilities and grid companies, and alongside them the leaders in renewables, storage, electric mobility, manufacturing, digital technology, AI and finance, as well as the young professionals who will run these systems in the decades ahead.
Let me conclude with a simple thought.
Electricity is becoming the backbone of how the world works and grows. Our task is to keep today’s systems secure, affordable and reliable while we build the systems that come next.
That requires investment, innovation and vision. Above all, it requires cooperation. No nation, company or institution can manage this transformation alone.
Working together, and building trust across borders and differences, we can deliver more and better energy for all.
I wish you a successful and productive Forum, and I look forward to welcoming you all to Riyadh next April.
Thank you.