By Lao Yu'er, Edited by Yang Xuran
With only four years left until the carbon peak in 2030, this time window is narrower than many perceive.
In July 2026, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) issued the annual task list for industrial energy conservation supervision, covering 3,874 enterprises nationwide. The scope of supervision has extended from steel and cement to electrolytic aluminum and computing power facilities.
Almost simultaneously, the State Council released the "Action Plan for Carbon Peaking During the 15th Five-Year Plan Period," requiring the energy consumption per unit of industrial value-added of industrial enterprises above designated size to decrease by about 10% during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period. With multiple documents implemented in intensive succession, the signal is already very clear:
Energy conservation and carbon reduction are no longer optional choices, but rigid constraints concerning the survival of enterprises.
However, the tightening of policies is only one side of the coin. The other side is that the chronic issues accumulated in the industrial energy conservation industry over the past decade have been thoroughly exposed at this moment.
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The Old Ledger of Paper-Based Energy Conservation
For a long time, there has been a cruel truth in industrial energy conservation: everyone is competing on parameters, everyone is playing with estimations, and everyone is doing paper-based energy conservation.
The typical project process goes like this: equipment manufacturers provide energy efficiency data under laboratory conditions and use theoretical models to calculate annual electricity savings and energy-saving rates. The data looks impressive during proposal presentations, and once the contract is signed and the equipment is installed, as for how much electricity is actually saved during operation, there is no precise metering, no long-term verification, and certainly no third-party audit. The energy-saving effect becomes a muddled account that cannot be clearly explained.
This is not an isolated phenomenon. The industry generally lacks traceable and verifiable energy consumption data collection methods, leaving the energy-saving benefits of a large number of projects at the estimated level.
A deeper hidden danger lies in the proliferation of fake EMC (Energy Management Contracting) models. These business models, which are supposed to share risks, have turned into "guaranteed profit" traps in the hands of some service providers—exploiting information asymmetry to secure the profits from equipment sales while leaving all the risks of uncertain energy-saving effects to the client, thereby exacerbating the trust crisis among industrial clients regarding energy conservation retrofits.
Unprovable effects, untrustworthy data, and unequal risks—under the triple overlay, industrial energy conservation is deeply mired in a "trust deficit."
Policy Reshaping and Regulatory Upgrading
Precisely for this reason, the logic behind the implementation of the new round of policies is completely different from the past.
In the past, a project was considered passed as long as high-energy-efficiency equipment was purchased. Now, the new version of the "General Rules for Assessment of Green Factory" (GB/T 36132-2025) has been implemented at the end of 2025. The review logic has shifted from examining written materials to verifying the actual operation of the project, making the verifiability of energy consumption data a rigid standard.
In other words, energy-saving results must be reconciled and accepted using long-term measured data.
At the same time, the Energy Management Contracting (EMC) model has received unprecedented institutional support. The "Energy Law of the People's Republic of China," implemented in 2025, explicitly encourages the promotion of market-oriented energy conservation services such as EMC; the "Action Plan for Carbon Peaking During the 15th Five-Year Plan Period" further proposes promoting third-party governance models such as EMC.
This combination of institutional policies points in the same direction:
Shifting energy conservation from the extensive era of "making money through rhetoric, deceiving with parameters, and arbitraging through estimations" to the data accounting era of "measurable, reconcilable, and guaranteed."
Turning "Estimations" into "Reconciliations"
As the logic changes, the rules of the game must naturally change as well.
In the past, clients purchased equipment; today, clients need a verifiable energy-saving commitment. This forces service providers to complete upgrades on two levels: first, the reconstruction of the technical foundation to solve the underlying problem of "calculating clearly"; second, the iteration of business models to solve the trust problem of "bearing the responsibility."
Reconciliation in industrial scenarios is inherently more complex than in civil buildings. Unlike the relatively standardized electricity consumption models in commercial buildings, industrial systems involve multiple media—electricity, heat, compressed air, and process steam all require independent metering; operating conditions fluctuate greatly—production loads are dynamically adjusted according to orders and shifts, with peak-valley differences reaching several times; and system layouts are dispersed—factory areas span large distances, pipeline paths are long, and there are numerous energy consumption nodes.
In the past, a large number of projects failed to calculate the accounts clearly, essentially because they lacked the metering capability to penetrate to the end of the system. They could only rely on rough calculations from the factory's main meter, resulting in huge errors and ultimately turning into muddled accounts.
Here is an easily overlooked physical fact: the energy efficiency parameters on the equipment nameplate are laboratory values under rated conditions; whereas the actual energy consumption of the system depends on the partial load rate, hydraulic balance, and operation strategy.
In other words, energy efficiency parameters determine the upper limit of the equipment, while reconciliation capability determines the actual benefits—this is precisely the essential divide between "parameter involution" and "data accounting." To solve the problem of "calculating clearly," both precise metering of terminal hardware and full-link integration of the data platform are required.
Leading service providers with full industrial product lines, such as Midea, have extended high-precision metering down to terminals across all industrial scenarios: with core equipment such as chiller units, high-temperature heat pumps, air compressors, and steam compressors, covering the four major energy scenarios of cooling, heating, gas supply, and steam. The core equipment can be equipped with certified metering units and connected to full-link monitoring, achieving full collection of multiple media including electricity, heat, and gas, and refining the metering granularity from the factory's main meter to the single-system and single-equipment level.
Hardware metering is only the first step. After data collection, the platform is also required to complete long-cycle retention, analysis, and closed-loop optimization. Relying on the iBUILDING digital platform, unit energy consumption, pipe network loss, and system energy efficiency are all monitored in real time, with the entire process recorded and publicly accessible; on this basis, it can also intelligently predict equipment failures and energy efficiency deviations, shifting from passive maintenance to proactive optimization, transforming the energy-saving effect from a one-time paper-based calculation into long-term steady-state controllability.
From "Reconciliation" to "Fully Managed Services"
The establishment of the metering system is not only for reconciliation during acceptance but also the infrastructure for subsequent business model upgrades—only when the accounts are calculated clearly can trust be established, providing a foundation for the implementation of deeper cooperation models.
Industrial enterprises in different industries and of different scales face varying constraints and requirements. This has spawned the parallel development of multiple cooperation models such as EMC and BOT. However, regardless of the model, the core competition is no longer about equipment parameters, but the service provider's comprehensive contract performance and risk guarantee capabilities.
EMC (Energy Management Contracting) is the mainstream model in the current industrial energy conservation market: the service provider funds the retrofit, the client pays in installments using the energy-saving benefits, and both parties share the energy-saving benefits according to an agreed ratio.
Its core value lies in lowering the decision-making threshold for clients, making "zero initial investment" possible. The difficulty lies in the fact that profit sharing depends on the verification of energy savings, and the data must be clear and trustworthy. This is inseparable from the support of full-chain system capabilities—precise diagnosis, system design, equipment selection, intelligent group control, operation strategy, and energy-saving verification. If any link fails, this energy-saving account cannot be calculated clearly.
Under the BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) model, the service provider assumes full-cycle responsibilities from design, investment, and construction to operation, recovering the investment by selling energy or services to the client, and transferring it upon expiration. Compared with EMC, BOT has a longer cooperation cycle, a heavier role for the service provider, and a deeper binding of interests between both parties.
At the level of business model implementation, Midea has built a scarce diversified qualification barrier in the industry, possessing core qualifications such as general contracting for mechanical and electrical engineering construction, investment and operation of energy management contracting, and intelligent system integration.
The complete qualification system enables it to possess full closed-loop contract performance capabilities from scheme design, equipment investment, engineering construction, and intelligent integration to long-term operation and maintenance. It can adapt to the long-cycle, high-requirement, and strong-compliance implementation standards of industrial projects, truly achieving all-around guarantees for energy-saving effects, engineering quality, and operation and maintenance services. This is also a core advantage that most manufacturers relying solely on equipment sales cannot reach.
A leading international shipbuilding project in Zhoushan is such a sample. The shipyard's orders are already booked up to 2030, and the owner's energy is fully focused on the main shipbuilding business, yet they have a massive demand for compressed air energy—energy is a "necessary burden" they want to manage but cannot handle.
Midea's subsidiary, Meitong Energy, undertakes the survey and design, investment and construction, engineering installation, digital platform construction, and subsequent operation and maintenance of the air compression system under the BOT model. The shipyard achieves "zero capital investment, zero operation and maintenance pressure, and zero retrofit risk," leveraging over 3.6 million kWh of electricity saved annually and over CNY 2.55 million in electricity bills saved, with a comprehensive energy-saving rate breaking through 25%.
The same applies to new construction scenarios. In the Haisida Naxing Neijiang Sodium-Ion Battery Cell Base project, Midea built a large-scale industrial comprehensive energy station for the client under the BOT model, equipped with a 7,600 RT high-efficiency chiller plant, a first-level energy efficiency air compression station, and nitrogen generation units. Compared with the original plan, the overall comprehensive energy efficiency increased by 25%, expected to reduce costs by CNY 3.4 million and reduce carbon emissions by 650 tons annually, with a cooperation period of up to ten years.
The significance of these cases lies not in the numbers themselves, but in demonstrating the same possibility:
What the service provider offers is not a one-time equipment delivery, or even just a single energy conservation retrofit, but a set of quantifiable, guaranteed energy services that spare clients the worry of managing it themselves.
Bidding Farewell to Single-Product Competition and Entering the "Era of System Capabilities"
Achieving this step is supported by the construction of comprehensive capabilities behind the scenes.
No matter how advanced a single-point equipment is, without system coordination, operation and maintenance strategies, and digital control, the overall energy-saving effect will be discounted. This is also why industry competition is upgrading from the involution of single-machine parameters to the competition of system solutions and full-lifecycle service capabilities.
Underlying the support of system capabilities is the depth of the technical foundation. The most representative example is the platformization of maglev technology—maglev was previously only applied to chiller units, but has now evolved into a universal technical foundation for industrial thermal management.
Relying on over 15 years of independent research and development accumulation in maglev centrifugal chillers, Midea has transferred and reused core technologies such as mature magnetic bearings, high-speed motors, and variable frequency control from chiller units to industrial product lines such as air compressors and medium-to-high temperature heat pumps. It is not about developing new products from scratch, but about the migration and implementation of the same technical foundation under different industrial operating conditions.
The value of this cross-category technology reuse is twofold: R&D costs are diluted, while reliability is repeatedly verified across multiple scenarios. In heavy industrial scenarios such as rail transit equipment manufacturing, Midea equipped the Sheyang Wind Power Blade Base with a single-head 1,200 RT maglev chiller, solving the cooling challenges of large loads and high stability requirements, and expanding the application boundary of maglev from ordinary industrial refrigeration to the field of heavy equipment manufacturing.
Even in semiconductor manufacturing scenarios with extremely stringent process requirements, this technical foundation and rapid engineering delivery capability have been verified.
For the Huanghu Base of Jiangfeng Electronics, Midea built the first prefabricated rooftop high-efficiency chiller plant in the semiconductor industry, completing the chiller plant delivery in just 40 days and achieving comprehensive system implementation and delivery in 75 days. While stably meeting the strict temperature and humidity control indicators of the semiconductor production line, it optimized system energy efficiency, with the annual comprehensive energy efficiency ratio (EER) of the chiller plant reaching over 5.1, proving with verifiable operation data that high-energy-consuming precision manufacturing can also be green and efficient.
The first half of industrial energy conservation was the era of equipment manufacturers—selling equipment, competing on parameters, and comparing prices.
The theme of the second half has now become "reconcilable, guaranteed, and fully manageable," and the rules of the game have changed completely. Players who only know how to sell single-machine equipment will gradually be eliminated, while players who can provide a full closed-loop of technology, systems, models, and services will capture the main incremental growth.
The trillion-level industrial carbon reduction market will ultimately concentrate on a few leading players. After all, in the reconciliation era, no matter how good the rhetoric sounds, it is not as persuasive as the numbers on the bill; and the prerequisite for calculating the accounts clearly and guaranteeing the bottom line is the hard power of the full chain.