Recognizing the nexus between grid infrastructure, renewable energy, net interregional transmission and carbon emissions: Evidence from China

Abstract

Over the past few decades, China has undergone an unprecedented structural transformation, stupendously transforming its energy and environmental systems and decarbonizing pathways. Nevertheless, around the share of clean and renewable energy generation with the goal of low-carbon, it is still ambiguous how the dynamic relationship between the upgrading of grid infrastructure, interregional power trading and the investment and economic foundation that support their collaborative promotion forms. Thus, under the framework of panel vector autoregressive models, we study the bridge that links the key dominant factors in the pattern of electricity supply and demand such as grid infrastructure, power generation share of clean and renewable energy, net power input and carbon emissions. The results show that the governance framework dominated by power grid infrastructure upgrading, interregional power input dependence and carbon constraint mechanism to promote clean-oriented energy mix is still flawed. In addition to improve the utilization rate of power grid infrastructure, relevant policy makers should devote more efforts to software conditions including interregional and interprovincial power trading and grid-connecting mechanisms of clean and renewable energy.