Strategic deliberation on development of low-carbon energy system in China

In recent years, there have been considerable developments in energy provision with the growing improvements in energy supply security and support systems in China. However, China's energy system continues to retain a high-carbon feature where coal dominates energy production and consumption, which has led to the rapid growth of greenhouse gas emissions and associated serious environmental pollution. It has therefore become an important task for China to consider how to promote the low-carbon development of energy system. This paper summarized the basic trends and challenges for development of low-carbon energy system in China and studied the primary energy consumption and carbon emissions in different scenarios at 10-year intervals between 2010 and 2050. The analysis showed that controlling coal consumption will have an important influence on the control of total carbon emissions and of carbon emission peaking; promotion of non-fossil fuel energies will offer a growing contribution to a low-carbon transition in the medium and long term; the development of carbon capture, utilization, and storage will play a key role in realizing a deep decarbonization pathway, particularly after 2030; and the establishment of a low-carbon power system is crucial for the achievement of low-carbon energy transition. Finally, the strategic considerations and policy suggestions on the development of low-carbon energy systems in China are explored

Renewable and low-carbon energies as mitigation options of climate change for China

This article discusses how renewable and low-carbon energies can serve as mitigation options of climate change in China’s power sector. Our study is based on scenarios developed in PowerPlan, a bottom-up model simulating a countries’ power sector and its emissions. We first adjusted the model to China’s present-day economy and power sector. We then developed different scenarios based on story lines for possible future developments in China. We simulated China’s carbon-based electricity production system of today and possible future transitions towards a low-carbon system relying on renewable and low-carbon energies. In our analysis, we compare the business-as-usual scenarios with more sustainable energy scenarios. We found that by increasing the share of renewable and nuclear energies to different levels, between 17% and 57% of all CO2 emissions from the power sector could be avoided by 2030 compared to the business-as-usual scenario. We also found that electricity generation costs increase when more sustainable power plants are installed. As a conclusion, China has two options: choosing for high climate change mitigation and high costs or choosing for moderate climate change mitigation and moderate costs. In case high climate change mitigation will be chosen, development assistance is likely to be needed to cover the costs.