Peaking carbon emissions in China’s power sector from a regional perspective

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Ru Li, Biying Yu and Baojun Tang

CEEP, Beijing Institute of Technology, China
SME, Beijing Institute of Technology, China
Beijing Key Lab of Energy Economics and Environmental Management, China
Sustainable Development Research Institute for Economy and Society of B

: Expert Opin Environ Biol

Abstract

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China, the largest greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitter in the world, pledged to peak its carbon emissions by 2030. Considering the great contribution of power industry on the 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 peaks its carbon emissions prior to 2030 will peak China’s power industry its carbon emissions 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 3717.99 MtCO2 in 2023. All regional power industries will achieve the goals of peaking their CO2 emissions by 2030 except East. After taking the advantage of promoting nuclear power generation technology vigorously in the East region, it can peak its CO2 emissions in 2040. Due to the development of wind power and solar power generation technologies, North and Northeast could peak their CO2 emissions at 1358.55MtCO2 in 2026 and at 224.86 MtCO2 in 2020, respectively. Center area could peak its CO2 emissions at 407.14MtCO2 in 2023 if increasing the capacity of hydro power by 52.65% until 2030 compared to 2015. Northwest will peak its CO2 emissions in 2023 as well and could achieve all the electricity generated by renewable energy in 2050. The power industry in South would peak its CO2 emissions earliest in 2015 with 343.55 MtCO2.

Biography

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