Low-carbon hybrid energy systems——Future energy solutions and development models in China?

Abstract

Coal dominated energy resource and its consumption structure in China, along with both growing demand for energy and high pressure for CO2 emission reduction, are the great challenges for China’s future energy development. Thus, the hybrid energy system was proposed for a possible solution to China’s high carbon energy utilization in the present work. High carbon energy resources such as coal could be coupled with low carbon energy resources such as nuclear energy and renewable energies by the effective integration between mater, energy and information. In this case, both energy and carbon efficiency could be highly improved with a reduction of CO2 emission, and at the same time CO2 could be used as a resource. As a result, hybrid energy system is expected to be the strategic solution to China’s future energy development. Based on the above consideration, nuclear-assisted coal-based energy system and wind/solar-assisted coal (biomass)-based systems were constructed as the case study for the preliminary techno-economic evaluations with detailed explanations provided.