Solar photovoltaics can help China fulfill a net-zero electricity system by 2050 even facing climate change risks

Highlights

• A high spatial resolution land-use suitability assessment for large-scale PV in China.

• A PRECIS model-based climate change simulation under RCP 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios.

• The impacts of climate change on generation potential for different land classifications.

• The contribution of large-scale PV deployment to China's net-zero electricity system by 2050.

Abstract

As China has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2060, electrifying its energy sector is no doubt one of the priority measures to support the transition towards a more sustainable and decarbonized energy system. Solar photovoltaics (PV) has been known as one of the most promising renewable technologies to facilitate the electrification of energy systems. The feasibility of utilizing PV to implement a nationwide decarbonized electricity system now becomes an urgent unanswered question, especially in the context of global climate change and rapid economic growth in China. Here, by using a GIS-based multiple-criteria decision-making approach we address this question by conducting a comprehensive feasibility analysis with consideration of various economic, technological, logistical, and climate change factors. We show that it is feasible for China to fulfill a net-zero electricity system by 2050, through the installation of 7.46 TW solar PV panels on about 1.8% of the national land area (mostly in western China) with a total capital investment of 4.55 trillion USD in the next 30 years. Besides, we show that future climate change may lead to a slight decrease (less than 5%) in solar energy potential, but this would not affect the capability of the nationwide PV system to meet the need for a fully-electrified energy system.

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:

• Providing a high spatial resolution land-use suitability assessment for large-scale PV in China with a comprehensive multi-criteria assessment;

• Investigating the development degree of land area for large-scale PV to fulfill a net-zero electricity system;

• 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.