A multi-period power generation planning model incorporating the non-carbon external costs: A case study of China

The negative externalities apart from carbon emissions are often neglected in most power generation planning models, which will affect the human health, biodiversity, crop yield and land use greatly. To achieve a sustainable development of China's power industry, this paper develops a deterministic linear programming model with consideration of the non-carbon externalities. This model has been applied for the case study of China for the period from 2015 to 2030, through which some interesting results have been drawn. Firstly, most of the new capacity additions are from the non-fossil fuel power plants in this planning horizon, which account for 84% of the total new capacity additions. Secondly, the power generation priority would better be given to the non-fossil fuel power plants in this horizon under the cost-effectiveness criteria. Thirdly, the minimum total cost of China's power planning is 34.48 trillion yuan, which equals to 2% of China's GDP during the planning horizon. Finally, neglecting of non-carbon externalities does have a significant influence on the power planning results, which will lead to a higher power generation share of technology with bigger negative externalities.