Abstract
Inter-provincial power transmission in China solved the problem of electricity production and consumption spatial mismatch, which also facilitated Chinese green energy transition and sustainable development. Aiming to understand the spatial patterns and main driving factors, this paper accounted the aggregate carbon intensity per electricity produced by each province, built the inter-provincial Out–Destination matrixes of carbon emission embodied in power transmission among 27 provincial areas of 2006 and 2019, and quantitatively analyzed the change in spatial patterns of carbon flow and carbon intensity difference between power inward and outward provinces. We found that the inter-provincial power transmission has led to the reduction in the national average carbon intensity per electricity produced from 0.855 kg/kWh in 2006 to 0.628 kg/kWh in 2019 and the green energy transition of all provinces. The spatial morphology characteristics of carbon flow show the ‘three corridors of West-East Power Transmission (WEPT)’ pattern, in which power is transmitted from some main thermal power-dominated provinces in central and north-west China to the eastern coastal provinces. Further, it resulted in the carbon leakage from electricity consumption of the coastal provinces and carbon overload of the hinterland provinces. Despite natural resource endowment, the location of the provinces in the national power grid, the national low-carbon energy transition strategy, as well as advances in long-distance ultra-high-voltage power transmission technologies were the main factors to the formation and evolution of Chinese electricity green transition.
Highlights
As the world’s largest electricity producer and consumer, China is facing a serious spatial imbalance of electricity supply and demand
In addition to promoting various low-carbon generation technologies, the Chinese government has focused on raising the proportion of nonfossil energy and building a nationwide super grid to facilitate the development of clean energies such as hydro, wind, and solar power in the western hinterland provinces, from where it would be transmitted to the eastern coastal provinces to substitute for coal-fired generation [13,14,15]
Why are inter-provincial electricity flows embodied with different amounts of CO2? According to Equation (3), it can be found that the amount of embodied CO2 in interprovincial power transmission was dependent on the ACIP value and the amount of electricity transmitted in the lines
Summary
As the world’s largest electricity producer and consumer, China is facing a serious spatial imbalance of electricity supply and demand. Some scholars have focused attention on the forecasting of carbon reduction through inter-regional power transmission using a multi-regional optimizing model [15,23,24,25,26] These studies barely touch on spatial features and the influential factors of the green transition process. This study faces several challenges, including building the inter-provincial power transmission matrix, accounting for the CO2 embodied in the power transmission matrix, and quantitatively exploring the different impacts of power transmission on provincial energy transition This study overcame these challenges by integrating multi-source data, interviewing relative agents, and reviewing relative literature. Despite energy communities concerning the decarbonization of electricity production and consumption, this study built the inter-provincial power transmission matrix and accounted the CO2 em-.
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