Spatiotemporal carbon footprint and associated costs of wind power toward China's carbon neutrality

Abstract

The global shift to net-zero emissions necessitates large-scale wind power deployment and associated wind-turbine production. There's an urgent need to spatiotemporal analyze wind power's carbon footprints and costs along its industrial chain for policy-making towards net-zero manufacturing. Here, we integrate the China-focused Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM-China) and Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) to explore the evolution of carbon footprint of wind power and resulted cost competitiveness from 2017 to 2060 in China, the foremost global manufacturer of wind turbines with a relatively high industrial carbon intensity. Findings show the national life-cycle CO2 emissions amounted to 26.20 g/kWh in 2017, forecasted to decrease to 8.61 g/kWh by 2060, benefiting primarily from the carbon-neutral electric power system. The study underscores inter-provincial collaboration for cleaner manufacturing; 44.1 % of nationwide wind power carbon footprints stem from coal-dependent North China. Carbon pricing may differentially impact wind power manufacturing's cost competitiveness due to regional disparity of carbon-intensities.