Benchmarking China’s power system transition: Why China should set ambitious new goals for its share of non-fossil electricity generation

Abstract

United Nations Environment Programme, in its latest Emissions Gap Report, highlights the significant distance between countries’ pledges and what is needed to stay on a 1.5 °C pathway, and calls on all nations to raise the ambition of their nationally determined contributions, updates of which are due by February 2025. As the world’s largest carbon emitter, China’s commitment is critical to the success of any global compact addressing climate change. Power sector accounts for over 40% of China’s carbon emission, thus is a key area of both progress and concern. We argue that the share of non-fossil electricity generation is a more appropriate and robust benchmark of measuring China’s power system transition, as it would be minimally influenced by the significant uncertainty in demand growth. By contrast, capacity targets such as tripling renewable installations by 2030 are less useful, especially given the record growth of solar and wind buildout. Our analysis shows that China could reach around 80% of non-fossil generation by 2035 across a variety of demand, technology, and carbon constrain scenarios.