1. Since 2018, the United States has identified China as a competitor and the Trump administration has provoked economic and trade frictions between China and the United States. After that, the call for decoupling or even full decoupling from China's science and technology in the United States is rising, which is a major challenge for China's science and technology, including the field of energy technology. We should get rid of illusions, make preparations early, adhere to the principle of self-centered and open cooperation, and increase independent research and development efforts.

2. The combined impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the oil price war has greatly depressed oil prices. From March to April 2020, international oil prices fell all the way, and on April 20, the futures price of West Texas Light intermediate base crude oil (WTI) in the United States fell to -37.3 US dollars/barrel, which is the first time in history! For some time to come, oil prices below $60 per barrel is a high probability event.

3. The rapid progress of artificial intelligence, blockchain and other technologies will profoundly affect the development of future energy, and will change the energy pattern and business format to some extent. Disruptive technology has always been accompanied by the history of human science and technology progress, and has unforeseeable properties. Only by accurately grasping these development trends can we make a more accurate judgment on the future development trend of energy science and technology.

4. Low-cost technology will be the core competitiveness of enterprises

In 1967, American petroleum geologist Hubbert established the "bell shape" model used to predict the cumulative production of oil fields and the final recoverable reserves. Since then, the peak oil theory has been prevalent, and the scarcity of oil resources has been overemphasized. In this context, the acquisition of more oil and gas reserves has become one of the important strategic goals of most oil companies, especially the international oil companies, which is an era of "resources are king".

The success of the "shale revolution" in the US has dispelled concerns about the scarcity of oil and gas resources. According to the evaluation results of the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the total amount of global oil and natural gas technically recoverable resources is as high as 3.357 billion barrels and 648 trillion cubic meters, respectively, and oil and gas resources are no longer scarce. In addition, due to the use of solar and wind energy, energy has become renewable, inexhaustible and inexhaustible. Who has the technology, who has the energy resources, this is an era of "technology is king".

In the era of "technology is king", the cost or efficiency of obtaining energy resources is the key to success, so the development of low-cost technology is an important trend in the future.

In recent years, the rapid development of renewable energy has benefited from its significant reduction in cost.

The weighted average levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) for utility-scale PV in 2018 was 77% lower than in 2010, and onshore wind was 35% lower.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that the LCOE of wind and solar power projects coming on stream in the United States after 2022 will be lower than that of gas-fired power generation. At the same time that centralized renewable power generation has dramatically reduced costs and developed rapidly, the development of decentralized power generation has also accelerated.

According to the data released by the Photovoltaic Association, in 2018, China added 23.2 million kilowatts of distributed photovoltaic installed capacity, accounting for 52.7%, exceeding centralized photovoltaic for the first time;

This momentum continued in 2019, and small-scale household distributed photovoltaics accounted for nearly half.

Low cost renewable energy technology is the key field of energy science and technology development. Solar and wind energy are the main body of renewable energy in the future, and reducing costs, improving technology maturity and building appropriate business models are the future development direction of renewable energy.

In the field of wind energy, the future technology development direction mainly includes high-power wind turbine design, fan operation and maintenance and fault diagnosis, high-power wireless transmission of high-altitude wind power generation technology.

In the field of solar energy, it is necessary to focus on the development of solar thermal power generation, thin film battery technology, solar hydrogen production technology, wearable flexible and portable solar cell technology.

Low-cost technologies in the oil and gas sector are also the focus of energy technology development. By 2050, the proportion of oil and gas in the primary energy consumption structure will remain at about 50%, which has become the consensus of the industry.

In the deepwater oil and gas sector, which has seen the fastest growth in recent reserves, the deployment of integrated floating gas production, processing, liquefication, storage and offloading (FLNG) platforms and subsea production equipment, combined with continuous structural optimization, can reduce production costs to below $50 per barrel.

Shale oil and gas is another important area for future storage and production, and the equilibrium price of shale oil development in the United States fell by 50% overall from 2012 to 2016, with technological advances contributing one-third of the decline.