Scenario analysis of carbon emissions of China's electric power industry up to 2030

Abstract

In this paper, the Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning (LEAP) model is constructed to simulate six scenarios for forecasting national electricity demand in China. The results show that in 2020 the total electricity demand will reach 6407.9~7491.0 billion KWh, and will be 6779.9~10,313.5 billion KWh in 2030. Moreover, under the assumption of power production just meeting the social demand and considering the changes in the scale and technical structure of power industry, this paper simulates two scenarios to estimate carbon emissions and carbon intensity till 2030, with 2012 as the baseline year. The results indicate that the emissions intervals are 4074.16~4692.52 million tCO2 in 2020 and 3948.43~5812.28 million tCO2 in 2030, respectively. Carbon intensity is 0.63~0.64 kg CO2/KWh in 2020 and 0.56~0.58 kg CO2/KWh in 2030. In order to accelerate carbon reduction, the future work should focus on making a more stringent criterion on the intensity of industrial power consumption and expanding the proportion of power generation using clean energy, large capacity, and high efficiency units.