Abstract
In this paper we study and compare the environmental efficiency of 118 photovoltaic (PV) plants in China. Drawing on the nonparametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) method, our study takes the initiative to take the insolation, annual sunshine duration, and covering area as input variables into account, as well as the installed capacity, annual electricity generation, CO2 emission reduction, and coal saving as output variables, to provide a unified measure of environmental efficiency of PV plants in China. We find widespread inefficiencies in roughly 95% of the PV plants, and the performance of different economic zones and types of PV plants are quite different. Specifically, those PV plants in eastern China are the least satisfying performers among three different economic zones. The surprising result indicates that eastern China has room for improvement by overcoming the inefficiencies caused by serious aerosol pollution and the high urbanization rate. We also find rooftop PV plants have the highest efficiencies among the four types of PV plants due to very little power loss. However, complementary PV plants have the lowest efficiencies most likely because of high operating temperatures during the process of power generation.
Highlights
The world’s population is growing, and meeting the increasing energy demands while managing environmental, social, and economic issues is one of the greatest challenges of our time
The purpose of this study is to examine whether economic zones and PV types are sufficient factors in determining the environmental efficiency of PV power plants in China, and we find high dispersions of efficiency across economic zones and types of PV plants
The results show that the average value of pure technical efficiency (PTE) is 0.7688, indicating that the PTE of PV plants are generally preferable
Summary
The world’s population is growing, and meeting the increasing energy demands while managing environmental, social, and economic issues is one of the greatest challenges of our time. The problems arising from the use of fossil energy have led to widespread considerations of the types and structure of future social energy utilization. In this context, the transformation of alternative energy is thriving. The world’s energy structure is shifting from high-emissions fossil energy to renewable energy and clean energy, such as solar energy, wind energy, and hydropower. Economies of scale and technological advances have seen production costs of renewable energy decline dramatically. This global shift in the energy landscape means generating more renewable energy from sources like solar power which are delivering more clean energy
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