This photo taken on June 16, 2022 shows a wind farm in Qiqihar City, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. In recent years, the three northeastern provinces of Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang have sped up the development of clean energy generation such as wind power, photovoltaic power and biomass power generation. This is of great significance for ensuring safe and reliable power supply, accelerating clean energy transition and low-carbon development, and promoting the full revitalization of northeast China. (Xinhua)

China's Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang has called for a closer energy partnership with Russia at the fifth China-Russia Energy Business Forum, which opened on Thursday in Beijing following the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.

Ding said that China and Russia should build a closer energy partnership, push forward energy cooperation to make more new achievements and make more new contributions to ensuring global energy security and promoting the sustainable development of energy.

Ding made three proposals for deepening China-Russia energy cooperation: promoting infrastructure connectivity, strengthening cooperation in emerging fields such as renewables and the carbon market, and deepening global energy governance cooperation.

China and Russia should solidly promote energy infrastructure connectivity and maintain effective communication to ensure the secure and stable operation of cross-border energy channels, said Ding. 

Efforts should also be made to actively explore new areas of cooperation such as renewables, hydrogen, storage and the carbon market, to drive a technological revolution and industrial development in low-carbon fields. 

The two sides should continue to deepen global energy governance cooperation, firmly safeguard the openness and connectivity of the global energy market and promote the establishment of a fair, just, balanced and inclusive global energy governance system, Ding said.

The opening ceremony was attended by more than 400 representatives from relevant departments of China and Russia, energy enterprises, financial institutions, research institutes and industry  associations.

Energy cooperation is an important part of the bilateral trade relationship. The new growth points mentioned will further promote collaboration in the energy area, Lin Boqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University, told the Global Times on Thursday.

"China and Russia are complementary in energy cooperation. The two neighboring countries are important energy producers and consumers in the world. Therefore, cooperation is mutually beneficial and win-win," Lin said.

China-Russia energy cooperation has always maintained a good momentum. From January to August, bilateral energy trade reached $56.19 billion, a year-on-year increase of 6.2 percent, CCTV reported, citing figures released at the forum.

The figure accounted for more than 36 percent of the $155 billion in bilateral commodity trade in the first eight months, per a Global Times calculation.

In 2022, Russia emerged as China's third-largest supplier of natural gas and second-largest supplier of crude oil.

Experts said that alongside traditional energy sources, new-energy cooperation has gained significant traction in recent years.

China's comprehensive renewable energy production and manufacturing industry chains, as well as its world-leading technological level and industrial scale, could be the direction of cooperation between China and Russia, Lin said.

As energy cooperation deepens, it is expected that total bilateral trade will cross the $200 billion threshold this year, experts said.

In 2022, bilateral trade hit a record of $190.27 billion. China has been Russia's largest trading partner for 13 consecutive years.

Global Times