According to statistics, in the next five years, 20,000 gas stations across the country will be eliminated, from the current 110,000 to about 90,000. This means that one out of every five gas stations will close down, and the "golden age" of oil consumption in China may be officially declared over.
Why are gas stations disappearing on a massive scale? The answer is hidden in your garage.
In 2024, the number of new energy vehicles in China exceeded 30 million, accounting for more than 8% of the total number of vehicles. These electric vehicles not only let owners save money on fuel, but also directly "kill" 28 million tons of gasoline demand. Equivalent to nearly one-fifth of the nation's gasoline consumption!
The report shows that in 2024, China's apparent oil consumption of 756 million tons, basically unchanged from the previous year, but refined oil consumption fell 2.4% year-on-year to 390 million tons. The CNPC Economic and Technological Research Institute forecasts that demand for refined oil products will fall by another 1.9% in 2025.
Kang Yanbing, deputy director of the National Energy Conservation Center, mentioned: In the context of carbon neutrality, in the next 30 or 40 years, most of the fossil energy industries such as coal, oil and natural gas will gradually withdraw, and the power-based energy power mode will support the transformation and upgrading of the industrial economy and the increasing improvement of people's living standards, and we will usher in a new round of re-electrification. New economic growth points come more from high-end manufacturing and service industries supported by electricity. Vehicles, including transportation, are also rapidly shifting from traditional fuel to electric-based new energy vehicles.
Looking to the future, the automobile structure will also undergo great changes, by 2030, the proportion of new energy vehicles will exceed 30%, the replacement scale of refined oil products will continue to expand, and the vigorous development of the new energy vehicle market will also have a huge impact on traditional gas stations. Forced by realistic factors, gas station operators also seem to realize that transformation is not a choice question, but a required answer, and the role positioning of traditional energy supplies needs to be rewritten.
At the same time, the layout of China's new energy replenishment infrastructure also has the problem of unbalanced regional development, which has not fully met market demand. In this case, traditional gas stations, with their existing geographical coverage advantages, also provide innate help for their rapid entry into the new energy supplement market. The promotion of business formats from "refueling +" to "energy +" is also a key path for gas station industry practitioners to improve their competitiveness. From "oil + gas + hydrogen + electricity" to "energy + catering + shopping + car service + leisure", providing comprehensive services has become an important choice for gas stations to continue to extend and expand their business format, and to reshape the industrial ecology, define competitors, and explore the boundaries of cooperation through cross-industry collaboration.
At the policy level, on November 9, 2024, China officially issued the "Energy Law of the People's Republic of China" and took effect on January 1, 2025, which explicitly mentioned encouraging the development of integrated energy services. The specific content is: the state promotes the improvement of energy utilization efficiency, encourages the development of distributed energy and multi-energy complementary and multi-energy joint supply comprehensive energy services, actively promotes market-oriented energy saving services such as contract energy management, and improves the clean, low-carbon, efficient and intelligent level of terminal energy consumption.
At the application level, whether it is big data and AI blessing on the technical side, it provides help for remote monitoring and equipment diagnosis of the site to improve operational efficiency and service quality; Or the application of photovoltaic, energy storage and other facilities and equipment on the product side to comprehensively reduce operating costs and build a low-carbon or even zero-carbon energy supply network; Or in the user side to launch appointment replenishment, convenient payment, one-stop service, etc., to improve the experience and satisfaction; Even through cooperation with the upstream and downstream of the energy industry chain, the formation of resource sharing and complementary advantages, to achieve a win-win situation. These are profoundly changing the value of energy supply, allowing traditional gas stations to evolve into smart energy hubs.
Landing at the construction level, according to incomplete statistics of IESPlaza comprehensive energy service network, more than 20 comprehensive energy service stations of new energy stations with two or more refueling, gas filling, hydrogenation, charging/power exchange, photovoltaic power generation facilities have been landed in every province (region/city) in 2024. It is expected that by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan, the proportion of integrated energy service stations will exceed 10% of all gas stations; It is expected that by 2030, more than 30% of gas stations in China will be converted to integrated energy service stations.