Advantages and Future Directions of Quzhou's Development of the New Energy Industry

(Source: Quzhou Daily)

Reprinted from: Quzhou Daily

Zheng Gongqiang

Highlights: Quzhou’s development of the new energy industry differs from the homogeneous path followed by most cities in China—prioritizing end manufacturing and focusing mainly on scale expansion. It has charted a distinctive route featuring upstream materials as the foundation, closed-loop enablement across the entire chain, and development with geographic mismatches, resulting in three major differentiated advantages.

Currently, the global energy landscape is undergoing profound change. The security of traditional energy supply channels faces risks of spillover from great-power competition. Ensuring independent, secure, and controllable energy safety, and promoting a green and low-carbon transition, have become major issues of national security. The Outline of the “Fifteenth Five-Year Plan” states, in building a modern infrastructure system: “To implement the new energy security strategy in depth, accelerate the building of a new type of energy system that is clean, low-carbon, secure, and efficient, and build a strong energy nation. Promote the secure, reliable, and orderly substitution of fossil energy with non-fossil energy. Persist in coordinated development of multiple energy sources such as wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear, and implement the ten-year multiplier action for non-fossil energy.” This top-level design not only maps out a route for the development of the new energy industry, but also points the direction for seizing opportunities brought by energy transformation and promoting industrial transformation and upgrading. Based on its development strategy of “making Quzhou a strong industrial city and prospering the city through industries,” Quzhou has focused on the new energy and new materials track, deeply cultivated its industrial foundation, made breakthroughs in core technologies, and improved the industrial ecosystem, injecting strong momentum into the construction of a four-province border-area central city.

I. Differentiated advantages of Quzhou’s development of the new energy industry

Quzhou’s development of the new energy industry differs from the homogeneous path followed by most domestic cities—“prioritizing end manufacturing and focusing mainly on scale expansion.” It has charted a distinctive route featuring upstream materials as the foundation, closed-loop enablement across the entire chain, and development with geographic mismatches, resulting in three major differentiated advantages.

(I) Cross-sector enabling advantage of “fluorine-silicon new materials + new energy,” building upstream core barriers

Unlike most domestic cities that plan single-track development and have a disconnect between upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, Quzhou’s fluorine-silicon new materials can simultaneously provide “bottleneck” core materials for four major new-energy core tracks: lithium batteries, photovoltaic power, hydrogen energy, and energy storage. In the lithium-battery field: PVDF binders, electrolyte solute, and separator coating materials; in the photovoltaic field: backsheet encapsulation materials, and adhesive film additives; in the hydrogen-energy field: proton exchange membranes and hydrogen storage materials; in the new-type energy storage field: battery separators, corrosion-protection materials, etc.—all of which are highly dependent on fluorine-silicon new materials. This cross-sector capability of “one core enables multiple tracks” makes Quzhou an irreplaceable “granary of upstream materials” for the new energy industry in the Yangtze River Delta and even nationwide, forming extremely high industrial entry barriers. In the fluorochemical industry, licensing, technical, and environmental-safety thresholds are extremely high; industrial accumulation takes decades, and it cannot be replicated through short-term policy-driven investment attraction.

(II) Closed-loop advantage across the full lifecycle of lithium batteries, achieving full-chain independent and controllable material supply

Domestic lithium-battery industry clusters generally have shortcomings such as “strong in end products but weak in upstream,” “strong in a single link but weak across the full chain,” and “strong in domestic manufacturing but weak in global resources.” Quzhou has built a rare full-lifecycle closed loop: “global resource layout for cobalt-nickel-lithium—full coverage of four major main materials (cathode/anode/separator/electrolyte)—manufacturing of power batteries and energy storage systems—battery recycling and cascade utilization,” forming an extremely strong capability for supply-chain security and resistance to cycle fluctuations. Relying on chain-leading enterprises such as Huayou Cobalt and Juhua Group, Quzhou has achieved end-to-end integration of the lithium-battery industry from “raw materials” to “end products.” At the upstream level, Huayou Cobalt secures the world’s core lithium, cobalt, and nickel resources, solving the “resource bottleneck” problem for the new energy industry; at the midstream level, it achieves 100% local supporting for the four major core lithium-battery materials—Juhua provides electrolytes and PVDF; Puken Crystal enables domestic substitution of separator-dedicated PE powder for lithium batteries, breaking overseas monopolies; at the downstream level, Geely Sanqi’s globally largest intelligent manufacturing integrated plant and Penghui Energy’s energy-storage battery base form scaled end-product manufacturing capability; and at the terminal end, it has built a sound power-battery recycling and utilization system, realizing a closed-loop cycle between “urban mines” and the resource side. In 2025, Quzhou’s new materials industry chain achieved a total output value of 106.1 billion yuan, becoming the city’s first thousand-billion-yuan-level industry.

(III) Differentiated development advantage of a four-province border-area central city, building an industrial hub with bidirectional radiation

Domestic new energy industrial clusters mainly fall into two categories. One is cities in the core areas of the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, which focus on R&D, complete vehicles, and end-stage links; competition among them is highly homogeneous and intense. The other is resource-based cities in the central and western regions, which rely on mineral resources to arrange upstream smelting links; their industrial-chain extension capability is weak, and their market radiation radius is limited.

As a four-province border-area central city in Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Anhui, and Fujian, Quzhou has formed a bidirectional-radiation, misalignment-based development advantage. To the east, it deeply integrates into the division of labor in the Yangtze River Delta industrial chain, forming synergistic complementarity with Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Ningbo in terms of “R&D + manufacturing” and “end products + upstream,” without competing with core cities for red-ocean tracks such as complete vehicles and end products. Instead, it focuses on upstream core materials and key components for the new energy industry, capturing spillover from the Yangtze River Delta. To the west, it radiates across the vast application markets of Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Anhui, and Fujian. The demand in the four-province border areas for photovoltaic power, energy storage, new energy vehicles, and new-type power systems is strong. Quzhou can provide products, technologies, and services nearby, forming a unique pattern of “manufacturing in Quzhou, supporting in the Yangtze River Delta, and applying at the margins.” It turns the locational disadvantage of being “on the edge of the Yangtze River Delta” into an industrial advantage for the four-province border-area central city.

II. The road ahead for Quzhou’s future development of the new energy industry

(I) Strengthen innovation-driven development to shape core industry competitiveness

Focusing on the “bottleneck” technological challenges in the new energy industry, deepening the integration of industry, academia, and research, and supporting leading enterprises to jointly build innovation platforms such as key laboratories and engineering technology research centers with universities and research institutes. We should concentrate efforts to break through core technologies in areas such as high-end fluorine-silicon materials, new lithium battery materials, and electronic chemical materials, and promote the local transformation of scientific and technological achievements, enabling a leap from “following with technology” to “leading with technology.” At the same time, we should continuously increase efforts to cultivate specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative enterprises, improve the incubation system for science-and-technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises, and ensure that innovation vitality fully sparks across every link of the industry, using technological innovation to empower the construction of new-type energy systems.

(II) Improve the industrial ecosystem and expand emerging development tracks

On the basis of consolidating the core advantages of fluorine-silicon new materials and lithium-battery new materials, and keeping pace with the trend of the “Fifteenth Five-Year” plan—“persisting in the coordinated development of multiple energy sources such as wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear”—Quzhou should lay out emerging tracks such as hydrogen energy, energy storage, photovoltaic power, and new energy equipment, and promote multi-polar support and diversified development for the new energy industry. Relying on the locational advantages and energy resource endowments of the four-province border area, it should explore an integrated development model of “new energy + energy storage + smart grids,” build a regional energy-storage demonstration base, and help the new energy industry extend from “material production” to “scenario applications,” thereby building a modern new energy industry system across all fields.

(III) Deepen regional coordination to amplify the radiation and driving effects

Based on Quzhou’s positioning as a four-province border-area central city, it should actively integrate into the Yangtze River Delta integrated development strategy, strengthen industrial cooperation, innovation coordination, and market coordination with surrounding cities, and co-build cooperation parks for the new energy industry in the four-province border area, so as to create a cross-regional new energy industrial chain and supply-chain coordination system. Meanwhile, leveraging Quzhou’s industrial advantages to radiate and drive the development of new energy industry supporting sectors in surrounding areas will form an industrial development pattern of “the core in Quzhou, supporting around Quzhou, and markets across the country,” providing coordinated support for regional energy security.

(IV) Optimize the business environment and lay a solid foundation for industrial development

Always treat the construction of the business environment as a “top priority project,” continuously deepen reform of the approval system, keep improving the efficiency of government services, and build a market-oriented, rule-of-law-based, and internationally oriented business environment. In light of the characteristics of the new energy industry, improve the factor-support mechanisms, increase efforts to cultivate and attract high-end talent, build a full-cycle financial services system, and provide comprehensive support for the development of the new energy industry, so as to make Quzhou fertile ground for investment and entrepreneurship in the new energy sector.

(Author’s affiliation: Party School of the Qujiang District Committee)

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