Power Industry In China Research Articles

Desulfurization Electricity Price and Emission Trading：Comparative analysis of thermal power industry in China and the United States

China and the United States respectively adopted desulfurization electricity price and emission trading to achieved the effective sulfur dioxide emissions reduction in thermal power industry. By the methodology of cost-benefit analysis and comparative analysis with the United States, this paper analyzed the coal-fired power plants’ desulfurization cost, benefit, and social emission reduction cost of China’s desulfurization electricity price policy. The main findings are, the results of cost-benefit analysis show that China’s policy against the polluter pays principle, polluters can get benefit from this policy. Second, in terms of the cost of emission reduction, China’s cost is very high with 5.52 billion U.S. dollars in 2000 while the USA only cost 0.5-2.0 billion US dollars. Also, compared with the decreasing social cost of the United States, the China desulfurization electricity price policy leads the social SO2 reduction cost expanded and economic inefficiencies. The conclusion is, as the policy’s objective has been achieved, the desulfurization electricity price policy in China should be cancelled. The way of reducing pollutants emission in the form of price subsidies cannot be extended to other pollutants or other industries emission control.

Exploration of energy saving potential in China power industry based on Adaboost back propagation neural network

The power industry of China is an energy-intensive one. In recent years, the demand for energy-saving oriented researches has been increased to provide recommendations to the final energy abatement policy making for the industry. Hence, a study which analyzes the typical energy consumption influencing factors and the potential energy-saving capability for the current power industry of China is needed. In this paper, the energy consumption significant influence factors have been picked out and the potential energy-saving capability has been estimated through the analysis conducted under several different scenarios. The results of this work can contribute to the assessment of energy abatement spaces for the power industry of China from now to the year of 2025. At the beginning of the study, 8 factors including social, economic and technical aspects which affect the energy consumption significantly have been selected by Back Propagation Mean Impact Value (BP-MIV) network approach. Then the 8 filtered factors are employed as input in the Back Propagation Adaptive Boosting (Adaboost-BP) neural network model. The Adaboost-BP was trained and tested on existing data set. Being compared with the results on the same data set from grey prediction and regular BP network, the results of Adaboost-BP showed better accuracy over the other two methods. In the final step of this work, the potential energy-saving capability of China's power industry through the year 2025 was predicted using the trained Adaboost-BP network under 3 different scenarios. The results show that the energy consumption estimates can reach at most 319.657 million tons of standard coal under conventional condition at the year of 2025, with 307.8087 and 294.0182 million tons under moderate and advanced conditions respectively. This means that, 11.8483 million tons and 25.6388 million tons of standard coal could be potentially saved at the year of 2025 under moderate scenario and advanced scenario respectively. This work also presented a guideline for energy saving policies making for the power industry of China.

Efficiency assessment of waste incineration power plants in China using data envelopment analysis

China has ranked first in waste incineration power capacity and loading capacity owing to the promotion of favourable policies since 2017. Because of economic and environmental advantages, incineration power generation has become the most promising waste disposal method. To help further promote improve incineration power generation so as to improve the energy efficiency, this paper analyses the power generation and carbon emission reduction efficiency of 31 waste incineration power plants in China using data envelopment analysis. According to the results, all waste incineration power plants studied operate at an acceptable level and 70% of the operating efficiency them is approved to be efficient. As a result, waste incineration power plants of China have higher productive efficiency with lower environmental efficiency. Based on the result, this paper proposes suggestions for the waste incineration power industry in China, which may provide a reference for policy makers and firm managers.

Efficiency assessment of waste incineration power plants in China using data envelopment analysis

China has ranked first in waste incineration power capacity and loading capacity owing to the promotion of favourable policies since 2017. Because of economic and environmental advantages, incineration power generation has become the most promising waste disposal method. To help further promote improve incineration power generation so as to improve the energy efficiency, this paper analyses the power generation and carbon emission reduction efficiency of 31 waste incineration power plants in China using data envelopment analysis. According to the results, all waste incineration power plants studied operate at an acceptable level and 70% of the operating efficiency them is approved to be efficient. As a result, waste incineration power plants of China have higher productive efficiency with lower environmental efficiency. Based on the result, this paper proposes suggestions for the waste incineration power industry in China, which may provide a reference for policy makers and firm managers.

Simulating wind power plants for relay protection problems

Wind turbines with a capacity of several kilowatts and megawatts are actively used by the electric power industry in China, Europe, the USA and other countries. The wind has an intermittent nature, depending on the territory, can change its speed from 2 to 25 m / s during day. It’s necessary to study the dynamic impact of the wind farm and to adequately model their operation under different wind loads, taking into account that wind energy constitutes a significant part of the structure of electricity production in many countries, which is reflected in the transients in the power system, Changing or disturbance of the wind flow is reflected on the change of the real power output of each wind turbine. To study the operation modes of wind turbines under different conditions with different methods of specifying wind energy, short-circuit tests were conducted on the 690V wind turbines. The study of the operation of wind turbines in the network with various wind models clearly showed differences in the oscillograms of the current in time, that in order to assess the influence of the work of the wind turbine on the network, the dynamics changes in the wind turbine in faults.

Assessment of waste incineration power with considerations of subsidies and emissions in China

Municipal solid waste in China has increased rapidly in recent years with urbanization and economic development. The establishment of affordable, effective and truly sustainable waste management is a key point for the development of urban areas. However, as a renewable energy, the cost-benefit of supporting and the environmental performance for waste incineration power are seldom discussed. This paper discusses the current situation of waste incineration power industry in China and analyzes the required subsidies and emission reductions. The results show that waste incineration power needs relatively less financial support and perform well on emission reduction. Main obstacles to the development of waste incineration have also been investigated from the perspective of government, enterprises and local residents. Lastly, some suggestions are offered on how to tackle these issues. For instance: more regulation on waste classification; to integrate the informal workers into formal municipal waste management system; to communicate more effectively to the public to dispel general misunderstanding; application of the waste heat from cogeneration plants to local heat supply or central heat supply system.

The economic performance of concentrated solar power industry in China

Studying the economic performance is of great significance to the policy improvement and investment decisions making of concentrated solar power (CSP) industry. This study developed a cost-benefit model to analyze the economic benefits of CSP industry, under the current technological level and policy system of China. The results showed that: Firstly, the huge initial costs resulted in that the investment of CSP industry had to bear a long capital recovery period, which might add the investment risks; meanwhile it was still economically feasible because of better expected benefits. Secondly, for CSP industry, the internal rate of return mainly varied from 8% to 12%, and the average levelized cost of energy was $0.148/kWh; the economic performance of CSP industry was attractive from the multiple dimensions analysis, and the benchmark feed-in-tariffs could provide effective support for the CSP industry development of China. Thirdly, adopting solar tower CSP technology was better choice to improve the economic benefits of CSP industry, compared with parabolic trough and linear Fresnel CSP technologies. Lastly, the direct normal irradiation, initial costs, annual electricity production and loans ratio had important impacts on the economic benefits of CSP industry, and should be paid more attention in investment decisions.

Driving factors of electric carbon productivity change based on regional and sectoral dimensions in China

In order to reduce carbon emissions and maintain economic development in the power industry of China, the improvement of electric carbon productivity (ECP) creates more efficiency. The carbon emission estimation in the power industry is significant to the ECP calculation in this study. Thus, to make the ECP calculation more reasonable and fair, this study estimates carbon emissions from the power industry by the consumption-based accounting principle considering power transfers among the provinces. In addition, this research analyzes seven driving factors of ECP change in China by exploring the time series decomposition (2003–2015) from the power consumption perspective. The Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) method takes the regional and departmental dimensions into consideration. By applying the data from 30 provinces (including province-level municipalities) and three industrial sectors between 2010 and 2015, the influencing factors of ECP in each province and each industrial sector are discussed. The results show that: 1) Regional and industrial sector ECP, per capita GDP are the driving factors of increasing ECP; conversely, environmental efficiency of power consumption, industrial structure effect from the perspective of power consumption, economic efficiency effect of power consumption, and the ratio of total population to electric CO2 emissions play leading roles in the decline of ECP. 2) From 2003 to 2015, there are four distinct stages of the ECP changes. 3) The sub-regional decomposition indicates, during 2010–2015, the main power exporters have higher or medium level ECP, and the main power importers with rapid economic development manifest lower or medium level ECP. 4) Instead of solely focusing on GDP, the Chinese government should pay more attention to increasing the economic and environmental efficiency of power utilization. 5) The sub-sector decomposition shows, during 2010–2015, although the economic and environmental efficiency of power utilization are negative in the secondary industry, they are the greatest among the three industrial sectors, and the influence of the economic scale effect is stronger than that of technological impact on different industrial sectors. Finally, several conclusions are obtained which might be useful for the central and local governments to improve the national and regional ECPs.

Influencing Factors and Scenario Forecasts of Carbon Emissions of the Chinese Power Industry: Based on a Generalized Divisia Index Model and Monte Carlo Simulation

The power industry is the industry with the most direct uses of fossil fuels in China and is one of China’s main carbon industries. A comprehensive and accurate analysis of the impacts of carbon emissions by the power industry can reveal the potential for carbon emissions reductions in the power industry to achieve China’s emissions reduction targets. The main contribution of this paper is the use of a Generalized Divisia Index Model for the first time to factorize the change of carbon emissions in China’s power industry from 2000 to 2015, and gives full consideration to the influence of the economy, population, and energy consumption on the carbon emissions. At the same time, the Monte Carlo method is first used to predict the carbon emissions of the power industry from 2017 to 2030 under three different scenarios. The results show that the output scale is the most important factor leading to an increase in carbon emissions in China’s power industry from 2000 to 2015, followed by the energy consumption scale and population size. Energy intensity levels have always promoted carbon emissions reduction in the power industry, where energy intensity and carbon intensity effects of energy consumption have great potential to mitigate carbon levels. By setting the main factors affecting carbon emissions in the future three scenarios, this paper predicts the carbon emissions of China’s power industry from 2017 to 2030. Under the baseline scenario, the maximum probability range of the potential annual growth rate of carbon emissions by the power industry in China from 2017 to 2030 is 1.9–2.2%. Under the low carbon scenario and technological breakthrough scenario, carbon emissions in China’s power industry continue to decline from 2017 to 2030. The maximum probability range of the potential annual drop rate are measured at 1.6–2.1% and 1.9–2.4%, respectively. The results of this study show that China’s power industry still has great potential to reduce carbon emissions. In the future, the development of carbon emissions reduction in the power industry should focus on the innovation and development of energy saving and emissions reduction technology on the premise of further optimizing the energy structure and adhering to the low-carbon road.

Impacts of regional governmental incentives on the straw power industry in China: A game-theoretic analysis

China's straw power industry has been suffering from feedstock deficiency since the very beginning. Some local governments propose to offer price incentives to farmers or brokers on straw transaction activities. This paper aims to evaluate the impacts of such incentives and explore feasible ways for maximizing the potential positive effects. Both non-cooperative and cooperative game models are constructed for the members in a typical straw supply chain of China. The equilibrium decisions, payoffs, and social benefits are derived and compared analytically, while numerical experiments are set up for testing the analytical results and extending potential discussions. It is found that the incentives could not only enhance the straw transaction volume, but also benefit the straw supply chain members and the society. Meanwhile, the incentive effects are equal regardless of whether brokers or farmers act as the recipients. However, brokers may have larger bargaining power and grab more subsidizing benefits from farmers in the non-cooperative case. When the straw power plant works cooperatively with brokers, the subsidies may be shared equally and induce higher social benefits. In addition, the subsidies may work better when farmers have higher monetary sensitivity. It is thus suggested that the local governments should offer price incentives to either farmers or brokers on straw transaction activities and facilitate the cooperation between straw power plants and brokers. In particular, the governments should exert more incentive effort in relatively poor regions where farmers tend to be more monetary sensitive.

Impact of carbon allowance allocation on power industry in China’s carbon trading market: Computable general equilibrium based analysis

Global warming has necessitated the quest for CO2 mitigation globally. Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) is a market-oriented strategy which may be effective for CO2 mitigation. This study establishes a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to analyze the impact of different ETS quota allocation scheme on the electricity industry and determine the best choice of quota allocation scheme for the electricity industry in China. The research on China's carbon trading market may provide an important case for the global carbon trading market. The results show that different quota allocation schemes have impacts on electricity price, and there are some spillover effects to other industries. Higher Annual Decline Factor (ADF) will reduce carbon rights than lower ones. Changes in the quota allocation schemes of a single industry (electricity) can hardly affect aggregate GDP and CO2 emissions. Moreover, ETS quota allocation scheme in the electricity sector based on historical emission intensity could have better performance in commodity price, electricity supply, ETS price, GDP and social welfare. Thus, this paper suggests that the best choice of ETS quota allocation scheme in the electricity sector is the scheme that is based on historical emission intensity which ADF is 0.

Costs and benefits of renewable energy development in China's power industry

Abstract China's power sector has become the largest contributor to China's carbon emissions because of its coal-dominated power structure. Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy is an effective way to reduce carbon emissions and, therefore, a series of targets for renewable electricity generation have been put forward in national plans. However, how these targets will be reached is unclear. This paper uses a Long-range Energy Alternative Planning system (LEAP) model to explore the optimum development path of China's power sector from 2015 to 2050, taking into consideration the impacts of the renewable energy targets. Three scenarios are designed to examine the costs and benefits of developing renewable energy and improving the technologies for renewable power generation, comprising a base scenario, a renewable energy policy scenario and a technological progress scenario. The results show that the power generation cost would increase by at least 2.31 trillion RMB and that CO2 emissions would be reduced by 35.8 billion tonnes during 2015–2050 if power generation follows current planning. Furthermore, every 1% increase in the capacity factors of renewable electricity would on average result in the cumulative CO2 emissions decreased by 979 million tonnes and average CO2 abatement cost decreased by 5.56 RMB/tCO2 during 2015–2050. Based on this study, several policy implications are proposed for the development of power sector in China. Firstly, government may reconsider the current planning for gas-fired power and nuclear power to reach low-carbon electricity generation. Secondly, adjusting the carbon price can offset the additional cost of renewable electricity generation. Thirdly, promoting advanced technologies to match renewable electricity generation can obtain greater economic and environmental benefits. Finally, from the perspective of development potential, reducing the costs of solar power would be the emphasis at this stage.

Research of Thermoelectric Decoupling of Cogeneration Unit Based on Absorption Heat Pump

Due to a large number of new energy power generation, the contradiction of heat-electricity is prominent in the period of winter in north China. In order to effectively eliminate the renewable energy power generation and promote the healthy development of the electric power industry in China, it is urgent to improve the peak load capacity of cogeneration unit. In this paper, a new method of thermoelectric decoupling was proposed for traditional coal-fired power generation unit, which was the transformation of thermoelectric decoupling system of integrated absorption heat pump. The comparison tests before and after the transformation of the absorption heat pump was carried out for a pilot unit. Then, the thermal power decoupling capability, energy saving benefit and special advantages of this method were analysed. The result showed that this method can both improve the energy-saving and thermoelectric decoupling. Furthermore, it also can improve the thermal efficiency of the unit and maintain the characteristics of safe and stable operation and responsive of the power load.

Assessment of power industry development in China: Possibilities and challenges

China's power industry is facing the issue of reducing carbon emissions, a particularly important matter to address during the industrial development. Based on the emission reduction status of power industries in China, the possibilities and the challenges of dealing with climate change for Chinese power industries are discussed in this paper by employing PEST (political, economic, social, technological)-strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis. The Tradable Green Certificate (TGC) system and the Carbon Emission Trading scheme for power industry development and environmental protection are analyzed as well. The results show that (1) the possibilities of developing power industries and addressing the climate change issue involve internal advantages (three strengths) and external chances (four opportunities); (2) the challenges for the Chinese power industry involve internal disadvantages (three weaknesses) and external unfavorable factors (four threats); and (3) both the TGC planning and the carbon emission scheme, as an efficient market-oriented strategic change, can jointly adjust the structure of power industries.

Carbon emissions intensity reduction target for China's power industry: An efficiency and productivity perspective

This paper proposes a scenario analysis to address whether the national and provincial CO2 emissions intensity reduction target during 2016–2020 would be achievable for China's power industry with the identification of change on carbon productivity. This productivity indicator is further decomposed to investigate contributions of different sources to productivity growth when there exists technological heterogeneity. Evaluation results show that even if all electricity-generating units in each region were able to adopt the best practice, the nationwide 18% intensity reduction target is not feasible through improving technical efficiency or upgrading technology on electricity generation and carbon abatement in a short or medium term. The existence of regional technological heterogeneity in power generation and associated CO2 emissions reduction processes implies the necessity of more differentiated regulations and policies for emission reduction across China's regions and inter-regional technology transfer. The emerging national emission trading scheme could easy some challenges in formulating emission policy for heterogeneous regions.

How to peak carbon emissions in China's power sector: A regional perspective

China pledged to peak its carbon emissions by 2030. Considering the great contribution of power industry on the energy-related CO2 emissions and its main role for peaking China's CO2 emissions prior to 2030, this study aims to investigate the peaking time of CO2 emissions in China's power industry from a regional perspective. Only each regional power industry tries its best to peak its carbon emissions prior to 2030, will China's power industry achieve its carbon emissions peak by 2030. Consequently, we develop a National Energy Technology-Power (NET-Power) model to assess the impacts of technological improvement and energy structure shift on the carbon emissions for each region, and further answer the question of carbon emissions peak in the power industry. The results show that when taking joint actions of promoting advanced technologies and shifting to more renewable energy, China's power industry could peak its CO2 emissions at 3717.99MtCO2 in 2023. All regional power industries will achieve the goals of peaking their CO2 emissions by 2030 except East. The detailed development pathways of power-generation technologies for achieving the peak prior to 2030 in each region are drawn.

The allocation of carbon emission quotas to five major power generation corporations in China

Abstract The five major power generation corporations dominate the power industry in China, and play vital roles in China's carbon trading scheme. Under this circumstance, this paper studies the allocation of carbon emission quotas to China's five major power generation corporations based on the fairness and efficiency principles, which proves the primary prerequisite for setting up the national carbon market. Specifically, a bi-level programming model is developed to optimally allocate carbon emission quotas to the corporations, and then a zero sum gains data envelopment analysis (ZSG-DEA) model is adopted to evaluate the efficiency of the allocation so as to adjust towards the optimal solution. The results indicate that power generation has significantly positive influence on the allocation of carbon emission quotas. Moreover, the difference between the sum of optimal carbon emissions and the sum of carbon quotas allocated is 1.431 billion tons, which implies that the emission reduction potential of the five major power generation corporations is tremendous. Finally, the bi-level model in this paper can well capture the context of China's power industry and provide effective results for the allocation of carbon quotas.

Simulating the impact of investment preference on low-carbon transition in power sector

With the deepening marketization of the electric power industry in China, its low-carbon transition relies increasingly on enterprise investment decisions. These decisions can be influenced by the risk preferences and technical preferences of the enterprises, thus deviating traditional estimation with respect to both economic optimization and uncertainty. To evaluate the impacts of investment preferences on the development path of the power sector, we developed an agent-based model combined with Monte Carlo simulation to quantitatively capture the risk preferences and adaptive technical preferences of power enterprises in their decision-making process. Two scenarios were established with and without risk preferences and adaptive technical preferences, respectively. The results indicate that both the risk aversion and the adaptive technical preference of power generation enterprises play significant roles in promoting the low-carbon transition of the power sector and that they exhibit a synergistic effect. In addition, the risk aversion of power generation enterprises increases the stability of transition in the power sector. However, these two preferences lead to income loss and additional subsidy burden in the power sector. The preferences of power generation enterprises should be recognized and considered in the design and evaluation of low-carbon policies in China’s power sector.

Will Pollution Taxes Improve Joint Ecological and Economic Efficiency of Thermal Power Industry in China?: A DEA‐Based Materials Balance Approach

SummaryPrevious studies of the efficiency of Chinese electricity industry have been limited in providing insights regarding policy implications of inherent trade‐offs of economic and environmental outcomes. This study proposes a modified data envelopment analysis method combined with materials balance principle to estimate ecological and cost efficiency in the Chinese electricity industry. The economic cost and ecological impact of energy input reallocation strategies for improving efficiency are identified. The possible impacts of pollution taxes upon the levels of sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions are assessed. Estimation results show that (1) both energy input costs and SO2 could be reduced through increasing technical efficiency. (2) It is possible to adjust energy input mix to attain ecological efficiency, and, correspondingly, SO2 would be reduced by 15%. (3) The Chinese electricity industry would reduce its unit cost by 9% if optimal ecological efficiency is attained and reduce its unit pollution by 13% if optimal cost efficiency is attained, implying that there are positive ecological synergy effects associated with energy cost savings and positive economic synergy effects associated with SO2 pollution reductions. (4) Estimated shadow costs of SO2 reduction are very high, suggesting that, in the short term, the Chinese electricity industry should pursue cost efficiency instead of ecological efficiency, since alternative abatement activities are less costly and some of the abatement cost could be further offset by energy input cost savings. (5) There would be no significant difference between the impacts of pollution discharge fees and pollution taxes on SO2 emissions levels because of the relatively low pollution tax rate.

Study on Comprehensive Evaluation System of Power Transmission and Transformation Project’s Economy, Operation and Safety Based on TOPSIS with Combined Weight

As a basic industry of national economy, China's Power Industry has a direct impact on economic development of society and improvement of people's living standard. The construction of power grid project has characteristics of large-scale investment, long-period construction and comprehensive wide-range influence. It is of great significance to deepen research on evaluation system of project’s economy, operation and safety considering basic requirements of safety and stable supply of electric power. This paper establishes a comprehensive evaluation system of power transmission and transformation project’s economy, operation and safety and puts forward a comprehensive evaluation model based on TOPSIS with combined weight. The applicability of this evaluation system and model is validated through project data mining and empirical calculation, providing a theoretical and practical guidance for innovation in theory and method of project evaluation and expansion of power transmission and transformation project evaluation in the future.