Roadmap towards clean and low carbon heating to 2035: A provincial analysis in northern China

Abstract

China has made a lot of efforts on clean heating in Northern Region of China (NRC). Although there are lots of studies focusing on NRC heating, most of them focus on reducing air pollution, the potential contribution to address climate change and the difference of provinces and urban-rural areas are not fully discussed. Based on the above, this research intends to study NRC’s provincial heating transformation roadmap in urban and rural areas by 2035 with the considerations of both air pollutants and carbon emissions reduction using the China Regional Energy System Model (C-RESM). The results show that the existing clean heating policy can effectively reduce air pollution but CO2 emissions not enough. If the 2 °C temperature rise target is achieved as well, by 2035, the industrial waste heat shall be fully developed in the centralized heating areas and bear 9% of heating area, while the air source heat pumps and biomass heating in the decentralized heating areas, bearing 24% and 26%, respectively. Due to the lock-in effect, coal-fired CHP will continue to be the basic heating load in the urban centralized heating system, with a proportion of around 20% by 2035.