Dramatic reductions in solar, wind, and battery storage costs create new opportunities to reduce emissions and costs in China{\textquoteright}s electricity sector, beyond current policy goals. This study examines the cost, reliability, emissions, public health, and employment implications of increasing the share of non-fossil fuel ({\textquotedblleft}carbon free{\textquotedblright}) electricity generation in China to 80\% by 2035. The analysis uses state-of-the-art modeling with high resolution load, wind, and solar inputs. The study finds that achieving an 80\% carbon-free electricity system in China by 2035 could reduce wholesale electricity costs, relative to a current policy baseline, while maintaining high levels of reliability, reducing deaths from air pollution, and increasing employment. In our 80\% scenario, wind and solar generation capacity reach 3 TW and battery storage capacity reaches 0.4 TW by 2035, implying a rapid scale up in these resources that will require changes in policy targets, markets and regulation, and land use policies.
}, year = {2022}, booktitle = {iScience}, journal = {iScience}, series = {iScience}, volume = {25}, month = {10/2022}, url = {https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(22)01452-3?_returnURL=https\%3A\%2F\%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com\%2Fretrieve\%2Fpii\%2FS2589004222014523\%3Fshowall\%3Dtrue}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.105180}, note = {This article published in iScience is open-access and can be viewed here. A longer report on this research can be viewed\ here.
}, language = {eng}, }