Full length articleSolar photovoltaics can help China fulfill a net-zero electricity system by 2050 even facing climate change risks
Graphical abstract
Introduction
China, as the world's largest energy-consuming economy, has committed to carbon neutrality by 2060. To achieve its carbon neutrality by 2060, two specific targets that 85% of all energy and more than 90% of electricity coming from non-fossil sources (primarily solar, wind, and nuclear) by 2050 have been laid out. Renewable technologies such as solar and wind with cost-competitive advantages compared with coal and gas are essential to enabling the decarbonization of the power system and other sectors such as transportation and buildings (Feron et al., 2021). For example, due to the fast development of advanced solar cell materials with great cost reduction, the benchmark capital expenditure for utility-scale solar photovoltaics (PV) worldwide has declined from $3.50/W in 2010 to $0.61/W in 2020 (Jaganmohan, 2020). By the end of 2019, a cumulative amount of 629 GW of solar power was installed throughout the world, and the installed capacity in China (204 GW) accounts for one-third of global installed capacity satisfying 3.9% of national electricity consumption (China Electricity Council, 2020). Understanding the potential and spatial-temporal distribution of solar power generation is primary for the decarbonization of power systems and policy formation of renewable energy resources (Chen et al., 2019).
Land is the fundamental resource for photovoltaics deployment. It is reported that global PV solar energy installations are most often sited on croplands followed by arid lands and grasslands (Kruitwagen et al., 2021), which may bring potential environmental and ecological influences. In addition, land use for renewable energy development is also closely related to other sustainable development goals (SDGs) such as life on land, water resource, food production, job creation, inequalities, and economic growth, which should be carefully considered and balanced. Some previous research has evaluated the geographic and technical potential of solar photovoltaic power in China (Chen et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2019), in which only some basic geographic and climatological factors such as land-use type, slope, and solar radiation are considered. Thus, those results are insufficient to navigate the land chosen for PV development considering trade-offs between renewable energy exploitation and other SDGs.
On the other hand, there is growing evidence that PV power generation is influenced by climate change in varying degrees, such as changes and variability in surface solar radiation and other atmospheric variables affecting panel efficiency, namely air temperature, wind speed, and precipitation (Yalew et al., 2020). The reliability of PV output and investment risk induced by climate changes should also be considered in the long-term planning and site selection of PV installation. The impacts of climate change on PV generation output have been investigated by using various comprehensive climate projection models to project climate change scenarios for the 21st century. Empirical studies have been done for Greece (Panagea et al., 2014), the UK (Burnett et al., 2014), Europe (Jerez et al., 2015), Africa (Bazyomo et al., 2016), and worldwide (Wild et al., 2015; Feron et al., 2021). However, recent studies estimating the technical potential of PV deployment in China usually assume that the climate conditions be constant (Chen et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2019), which ignores the impacts of climate change in the long term.
A significant research gap remains in understanding how to assess the potential of solar PV development with the land-use priority and the impacts of climate changes, which requires synthesizing the land suitability assessment with climate change. Our goal here is to provide an overall picture of the geographic potential of large-scale PV plants (> 20 MW) (Ong et al., 2013) in China with a multi-criteria assessment of land suitability and explore the impacts of climate changes on the corresponding technical potential. Particularly, it is the first time to conduct the land suitability assessment for large-scale PV development with five criteria (i.e. climate, orography, location, environmental, and economic) and ten sub-criteria in China at a 3 km resolution. Based on the multi-criteria decision-making approach, we divide the suitable area into four classifications (i.e. most suitable, moderately suitable, least suitable, and unsuitable), estimate the corresponding technical potential of each classification as well as the projected changes induced by climate changes under two representative concentration pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) from 2019 to 2100. This study provides new insight into the large-scale PV planning in China with comprehensive consideration of land conservation and protection priorities and climate change risk, which can aid solar PV energy exploration aligned with sustainable goals. In general, the main contributions of this work can be summarized as follow:
- 1
Providing a high spatial resolution land-use suitability assessment for large-scale PV in China with a comprehensive multi-criteria assessment;
- 2
Investigating the development degree of land area for large-scale PV to fulfill a net-zero electricity system;
- 3
Exploring the potential influences of future climate changes on the generation output of large-scale PV deployed in areas with different classifications to assess the relevant risks caused by climate changes on the achievement of a net-zero electricity system.
Section snippets
Land suitability assessment for the large-scale PV deployment
Defining the restricted factors is the fundamental process to recognize the potentially available land for large-scale PV deployment. Land use (e.g. traffic, farming, construction, etc.) and environmental protection (e.g. wetland, forest, water body, etc.) are the common restricted factors considered in practice. Besides, since the construction cost on steep slopes is higher, the flat land area is more suitable for PV installation. Exclusion criteria on the slope, are also considered, for
Results
In this section, the geographic and land-use suitability assessment for large-scale PV deployment in China is first presented. Based on this, the capacity and generation potential estimation of large-scale PV plants in areas with different land-use suitability levels is evaluated to discuss its contribution to the deep decarbonization of the national electricity system. Furthermore, the climate change projections and the impacts on generation potential, particularly, the influences of climate
Discussion
This work reports that the total capacity potential for large-scale PV in China is 108.22 TW with 150.73 PWh annual solar PV generation (implying an average capacity factor of 15.9), which can bring 150.28 billion tones of CO2 emission mitigation caused by coal-fired power generation. These estimates approximate the work published by Yang et al. (2019) (141.0 TW/138.9 PWh, estimated capacity factor of 11.2) and Chen et al. (2019) (approximately 121.8 TW /203.9 PWh and estimated capacity factor
Conclusions
This work conducted a high spatial resolution land-use suitability assessment for large-scale PV in China under a GIS-MCDM research framework. This study is the first to conduct an elaborative land-use suitability assessment for large-scale PV deployment in China with ten criteria covering climate, orography, location, environmental and economic aspects at a 3-km resolution. It further explored the impacts of future climate changes (RCP4.5 and 8.5 scenarios) on the generation potentials of
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Ling Ji: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Funding acquisition. Yuxuan Wu: Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft. Lijian Sun: Investigation, Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing. Xiaohu Zhao: Software, Formal analysis. Xiuquan Wang: Visualization, Formal analysis. Yulei Xie: Visualization, Writing – review & editing. Junhong Guo: Software, Validation. Gordon Huang: Supervision, Writing – review & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72074013, 72140001, and U1765101).
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