Research on China’s Power Sustainable Transition Under Progressively Levelized Power Generation Cost Based on a Dynamic Integrated Generation–Transmission Planning Model

• Published in: Sustainability Vol. 11; no. 8; p. 2288
• Main Authors: Huang, He, Liang, DaPeng, Liang, Liang, Tong, Zhen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 16.04.2019
• Subjects: Alternative energy sources; Carbon; China; coal; Decision making; energy conservation; energy industry; Environmental impact; Innovations; issues and policy; Planning; power generation; Process controls; Sustainability; Sustainable development; sustainable technology; China
• ISSN: 2071-1050; 2071-1050
• DOI: 10.3390/su11082288

The government of China has introduced a series of energy-saving and emission reduction policies and energy industry development plans to promote the low-carbon development of the power sector. Under relatively clear and specific low-carbon development goals, the ongoing power transition has recently been studied intensively in the frame of global sustainable transition. With the development of renewable technologies, besides the long-term development goals, learning and diffusion of innovative technologies and the incentive effect of supportive policies are also important driving forces of the transition. The levelized power generation cost is the power generation cost when the net present value of the power project is zero. In this paper, the levelized power generation cost model with a learning curve and policy scenario is used to reflect the impact of technology diffusion and incentive policies from the economy perspective. By treating it as a state transfer function, a dynamic power generation–transmission integrated planning model based on the Markov Decision Process is established to describe the long-term power transition pathway under the impact of power technology diffusion and incentive policies. Through the calculation of power demand forecasting data up to 2050 and other power system information, the dynamic planning result shows that the current low-carbon policies cannot obviously reduce the expansion of coal power, but if strict low-carbon policies are implemented, the renewable power will gradually become dominant in the power structure before 2030.