The material implications and embodied emissions of clean power transition in Guangdong, China from 1978 to 2050

Abstract

The national and regional carbon neutrality ambition necessitates clean power transition but also requires significant amount of generation, transmission, and storage infrastructure for renewables. Understanding the consequent material implications and embodied emissions of such energy infrastructure development with a system perspective at various geographical scales is thus important for maximizing emissions reduction and minimizing trade-offs among climate, resource, and waste targets. Previous research along this line, however, often focuses on individual subsystems (e.g., power generation) or individual technologies (e.g., wind energy) on a global or national scale. Here, we combined a dynamic material flow analysis model, life cycle assessment database, and scenario analysis to characterize stocks, flows, and embodied emissions of six bulk materials and thirteen critical materials associated with clean power transition from 1978 to 2050 in Guangdong province, China. We show that Guangdong's clean power transition leads to a total material stock increase from 2.9 Mt in 1980 to 45.6 Mt in 2018 and further to 95.7 Mt in 2050 under the basic renewable energy scenario (BES). The material stock in both generation and storage subsystems will grow over time, whereas that in the transmission subsystem will peak at approximately 2040 and then gradually decline. The massive expansion of wind and nuclear energy will result in a drastic rise in materials use, especially for cement and steel. A higher proportion of renewables increases energy infrastructure embodied emissions but reduces overall emissions. Future mitigation efforts and policy should not only address operational emissions through energy structure adjustment, but also curb the embodied emissions through infrastructure lifetime extension, material efficiency improvement, and material production decarbonization.