State Grid Corp of China, the world's largest utility which shoulders a dual task of safeguarding the country's energy security as well as serving as an economic lifeline, has made innovations in helping enterprises develop new quality productive forces and save electricity expenses.

In the prefecture-level city of Huzhou in Zhejiang province, State Grid Huzhou Electric Power Co has designed a new post — carbon efficiency engineer — among its staff to help local enterprises boost advanced productive forces generated by revolutionary technological breakthroughs, innovative allocations of production factors, in-depth transformation and the upgrading of industries.

Qian Xinhui, a carbon efficiency engineer with the company, has tailor-made carbon reduction plans since early 2023 for Zhejiang Hongfeng Furnace Material Co Ltd — a refractory material production firm whose energy consumption per-unit-GDP has always been high due to its business nature.

The city of Huzhou has made statistics and accounting into 39 kinds of enterprise metrics, such as electricity, gas, coal and oil, and calculated carbon emissions per-unit added-value, offering a five-level "carbon efficiency code" for local firms, with Grade 1 indicating the lowest emissions level.

On March 25, Qian paid a visit to Hongfeng to check its carbon reduction performance, as the city conducts a quarterly, semiannual and annual evaluation into enterprises' carbon efficiency codes, letting them understand their efficiency levels in a timely fashion.

"Hongfeng's carbon efficiency code was Grade 3 in the first half of 2023, and I found that its nine diesel forklifts could be replaced with new-energy electric forklifts, which can help it save 630,000 yuan ($87,500) each year," Qian said, adding that he was coming to see how the move was progressing.

Zhou Yong, general manager of Hongfeng, said that with Qian's optimization plan, his company has run some automated guided vehicle battery robots. Meanwhile, they also introduced the first intelligent production line, and by using robots and big data to support management, the firm's total production efficiency can be raised by some 25 percent.

In addition to advising enterprises to "replace oil with electricity" to raise the rate of electric energy usage in terminal energy consumption, eliminate high-energy-consuming equipment and improve production technology, Qian's agency also recommended rooftop photovoltaic arrays for enterprises as a means of elevating energy efficiency.

At the Energy Big Data Center in Changxing county, carbon efficiency engineers from State Grid's local unit can monitor local enterprises' carbon reduction status every day by clicking on a carbon-monitoring module on a big screen and examining their energy efficiency bill generated by their carbon efficiency code.

On March 5, some carbon efficiency engineers from State Grid Huzhou Electric Power Co visited Changxing Zhonghao Textile Co Ltd to provide "power supply + energy efficiency services".

Besides providing electricity-consumption diagnoses through monitoring the energy consumption of facilities and equipment in Zhonghao's various production and processing links, they also conducted a maintenance inspection of its newly operated 475 kilowatt distributed-photovoltaic power generation project.

Yin Xiaoming, chief carbon efficiency engineer at State Grid Huzhou Electric Power Co, said State Grid carbon efficiency engineers are required to help an enterprise determine where its carbon emissions originate and why there are high emissions, and then devise "energy-saving" production plans in response.

At the beginning of 2023, Zhonghao's "carbon efficiency code" stood at Grade 5 — the lowest level — and this made its managers extremely anxious, Yin said.

With the help of the carbon efficiency engineers of the State Grid, Zhonghao upgraded its production facilities and installed distributed photovoltaics on the roof of an idle 600-square-meter workshop.

Currently, Zhonghao's rooftop solar array can generate 570,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, helping lower its annual electricity consumption by 8 percent, and upgrade its carbon efficiency to Grade 3 — on par with the local industry average, Yin said.

"At present, our team of carbon efficiency engineers includes 75 people. We use our professional knowledge to help local enterprises bolster their green energy-saving levels," he said.

Yin added that in the near future, they will further innovate their service modes and service carriers to better serve the development needs of new quality productive forces in Huzhou.