What is China's efficient power generation portfolio under carbon neutrality target? An empirical analysis considering flexibility and system cost.

Variable renewable energy (VRE) is the most promising form of primary generation under a carbon neutrality target due to its environmental benefits, incentive policy, and technological progress. However, the increasing proportion of VRE generation, such as solar and wind power, has sharply increased integration cost and reduced power grid stability. This study uses portfolio theory to investigate China's optimal power generation portfolio by 2050 considering flexibility constraint and system cost, including technical and integration costs. The results demonstrate that non-fossil-fuel power generation technologies have cost and emission reduction advantages over fossil-fuel-based technologies. VRE generation technologies must be developed in synergy with other forms of power generation when considering flexibility requirement and integration cost. A complete phase-out of fossil-fuel power generation technologies in China appears unlikely in the study period. Gas-fired and coal-fired power generation are the pillar forms of power generation to meet future flexibility needs.

Policy, technical change, and environmental efficiency: Evidence of China's power system from dynamic and spatial perspective.

Feed-in tariff (FIT) and renewable portfolio standard (RPS) policies have been implemented to facilitate wind and solar power technologies with the aim of achieving sustainable development in power system. It is essential to study how efficient these policies are in accelerating technical progress and how efficient the power system is in balancing development and environmental protection. Dynamic network data envelopment analysis and the global Malmquist productivity index are first employed to study the environmental efficiency and technical progress, after which a dynamic spatial Durbin model is applied to analyze the impact of policies on technical progress. The results reveal that both FIT and RPS lead to technical progress which is the main driving force in environmental efficiency improvement, but that RPS performs better than FIT. From a spatial perspective, the adjacent regions usually show similar characteristics in technical progress. Therefore, future policy design should carefully consider the regional agglomeration effects and should effectively strengthen the implementation of RPS policy.

Decomposing CO2 emission changes in thermal power sector: A modified production-theoretical approach.

Carbon emission from the thermal power generation sector is one of the main contributors to global warming. It is critical to objectively evaluate the influence of relevant factors on carbon emissions, which may be beneficial for the implementation of policies and the formulation of development plans. However, the current decomposition approach based on production-theoretical decomposition analysis (PDA) and weak disposability may cause deviation on potential emission reduction. This paper proposes a modified PDA model under the assumption of semi-disposability and decomposes the carbon emission changes of China's thermal power generation sector accordingly. The results show that provinces, which have the highest non-disposal degrees during the study period, are mostly located along the east coast of China. The growth in installed capacity is identified as the largest contributor to the increase in national carbon emissions, while the decrease in capacity utilization rate significantly benefits the carbon emission reduction. A cluster analysis is also conducted to give policy implications for provinces with similar characteristics. Compared with traditional methods under strong and weak disposability assumption, the proposed model shows great advantages in identifying the potential emission reduction and reflecting the real production process, which makes it more suitable for decomposing the changes of carbon emissions and other environmental pollutants.

Dynamic environmental efficiency analysis of China's power generation enterprises: a game cross-Malmquist index approach.

Since the power unbundling reform in 2002, China's power industry has been a typical sector moving towards marketization. The supply-side structural reform that began in 2015 has intensified the competition among China's power generation enterprises. In this context, this paper combines a data envelopment analysis (DEA) game cross-efficiency model with the Malmquist index approach to investigate the dynamic environmental efficiency of China's power generation enterprises in a competitive market. Furthermore, the system generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM) is employed to analyze the influences of factors on the dynamic environmental efficiency. The results show that: (1) Compared with the basic DEA Charnes-Cooper-Rhodes (CCR)-Malmquist index model, the DEA game cross-Malmquist index approach can enhance the discrimination among the decision making units (DMUs). (2) The change in the overall dynamic environmental efficiency of China's power generation enterprises mainly comes from the catch-up effect, while technological progress has not played a role as significant as expected. (3) The installed capacity growth rate, implementation of carbon emission trading pilots, economic growth rate, and enterprise ownership all affect the dynamic environmental performance of China's power generation enterprises during the study period.