Low carbon transition of China's electric and heating sector considering reliability: A modelling and optimization approach

Abstract

China has pledged for their carbon emissions to have peaked by 2030 and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. However, this requires restructuring of their entire energy system. This study establishes a bottom-up low-carbon transition model for electric and heating coupled systems. The power system's adequacy with high penetration of renewable energy is considered via an iterative calculation approach, the layout of the power and heat system and the future of coal power under carbon emission constraints are discussed. Different from other research, our results show that the capacity of coal power would further increase to support a reliable transition of power system towards a higher proportion of renewable electricity, and the current target of 1200 GW of wind and solar in 2030 is not enough to achieve rapid carbon reductions, and would result in an extra 1.6 to 2.2 billion t CO2 emitted compared to 2020. Achieving 50% of non-fossil electricity generation by 2030 is feasible, and the target needs to be raised to 1660 to 1850 GW at only 3% increase of total cost. Not building new coal power plants would result in a huge expansion of electricity storage in China, which is hard to realize because of extremely high investment cost.