How China's electricity generation sector can achieve its carbon intensity reduction targets?

As the largest sector with decarbonization potential, electricity generation is critical for achieving carbon intensity reduction targets of China by 2020 and 2030. This study combines temporal decomposition and scenario analysis to identify the key drivers and provinces with increasing carbon intensity of electricity generation (CIE) and designs four scenarios by integrating efficiency improvement and structural adjustment in 30 provinces of China, and estimates the possible reduction of CIE by 2020 and 2030. Results show that 1) CIE in China decreases by 7.25% during 2001–2015. The estimated CIE during 12th FYP in this study is 25% lower than the estimation using IPCC emission factors, which is closer to China's reality. 2) Driving forces of CIE changes in 30 provinces vary greatly across provinces. The increasing CIE in four worse-performance regions (i.e. Northeast, South Coast, Southwest, Northwest) is mainly caused by energy mix effect and geographic distribution effect. The CIE growth in South Coast is also related to thermal power share effect. 3) Both 2020/2030 targets can be achieved by regulating the drivers for CIE growth in 30 provinces (i.e., RAK scenario). CIE decline is concentrated in three types of provinces, namely provinces with large economic size, strong policy support and clean energy implementation. The findings and recommendations provide insights into achieving 2020/2030 targets for CIE reduction.