Least Cost Electricity Generation Planning for China with Low GHG Emission Using LEAP and EnergyPLAN

Abstract

As the world's most populated country with a fast growing economy, China presently burns about two times as much coal and fossil fuels as the US and four times as much as India for generating electrical energy, which are the source of GHG emissions. The fossil fuels are expected to unavailable in 50 more years if the consumption rate remains to grow at a high incidence. With the unstable nature of international crude prices, it is important to reduce this dependence and look for alternatives. In this context, renewable energy sources (RES) play an important role in supplying sustainable energy without environmental emissions. This paper investigates the effects of using RES in generation expansion and estimates the CO 2 emissions by developing various scenarios namely Reference scenario and Optimization scenario, under the least cost approach. The Long-Range Energy Alternative Planning (LEAP) model is used to develop these scenarios until the year 2030. The electrical energy demand, capacity to be installed and electrical energy to be produced by each plant are predicted for the year 2030 by LEAP. The output from LEAP are fed into the energy modeling tool EnergyPLAN, to plan the same in monthly and hourly basis.