Abstract
More than half of current coal power capacity is in China. A key strategy for meeting China’s 2060 carbon neutrality goal and the global 1.5 °C climate goal is to rapidly shift away from unabated coal use. Here we detail how to structure a high-ambition coal phaseout in China while balancing multiple national needs. We evaluate the 1037 currently operating coal plants based on comprehensive technical, economic and environmental criteria and develop a metric for prioritizing plants for early retirement. We find that 18% of plants consistently score poorly across all three criteria and are thus low-hanging fruits for rapid retirement. We develop plant-by-plant phaseout strategies for each province by combining our retirement algorithm with an integrated assessment model. With rapid retirement of the low-hanging fruits, other existing plants can operate with a 20- or 30-year minimum lifetime and gradually reduced utilization to achieve the 1.5 °C or well-below 2 °C climate goals, respectively, with complete phaseout by 2045 and 2055.
Highlights
More than half of current coal power capacity is in China
An important near-term strategy to address global climate change is to rapidly phase out the use of coal in the global energy system[1]. This includes that existing coal-fired power plants retire at a faster pace, which will be further accelerated if new projects at the planning stage continue to be built[2]
We evaluate the 1037 coal-fired power plants currently operating in China according to a total of eight different technical, economic, and environmental criteria and find that 18% of them perform poorly across all criteria evaluated, and that these low-hanging fruits can be retired first and rapidly
Summary
More than half of current coal power capacity is in China. A key strategy for meeting China’s 2060 carbon neutrality goal and the global 1.5 °C climate goal is to rapidly shift away from unabated coal use. An important near-term strategy to address global climate change is to rapidly phase out the use of coal in the global energy system[1] This includes that existing coal-fired power plants retire at a faster pace, which will be further accelerated if new projects at the planning stage continue to be built[2]. While several studies have quantified emission reduction and technology transition pathways in the Chinese power system under different climate goals, they look at coal phaseout in aggregate capacity or generation terms[4,5,6,7,8]. We detail how to structure a high-ambition coal phaseout in China by combining plant-level data, multiple retirement criteria, and long-term scenario analysis through a state-of-the-art global integrated assessment model. We answer the questions: When balancing multiple technical, economic, and environmental criteria, which plants can retire first, and which can retire later? What retirement schedules for individual coal plants are compatible with the 1.5 °C and 2 °C climate goals, and what are the implications for operational lifetimes and utilization?
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