China's wind electricity and cost of carbon mitigation are more expensive than anticipated
The success of China's transition to a low carbon energy systemwill be key to achieve the global level of emissions reductions needed to avoid large negative consequences from climate change. China is undergoing an impressive build up of renewable capacity, in particular wind. Using data from the CleanMechanismDevelopment project database between 2004 and 2012, this study shows that while Chinamade progress in bringing down the levelized cost of wind electricity and cost of carbon mitigation (CCM) serious grid connection issues and highwind curtailment rates resulted in a levelized cost of wind electricity that is one half to two times higher than expected, and aCCM that is four to six times higher. Sharp drop in electricity demand, utilization rate, and coal prices in recent yearsmay lead to even higher results. 1. Background: renewable energy integration inChina In 2014 China's wind energy installed capacity outstripped that of the US by some 75% However, China's wind turbines generated only 156 TWh of electricity in the same year, compared to 180 TWh in the US (see figure 1) This gap between the total installed capacity and electricity generation has narrowed in recent years but remains substantial. In fact, if China were to connect its entire wind turbine fleet to the grid and put them to full use at a 22% capacity factor, it would generate almost 40% more electricity from wind, or 217 TWh, an equivalent to installing an additional 32 GWof capacity. To address some of the country's serious environmental problems, China is undergoing amassive build up of renewable capacity, in particular wind. Furthermore, global progress in reducing emissions to avoid large negative consequences from climate change hinges on China's ability to transition to a low carbon energy system. However, efforts to integrate the country's wind power base into its electrical grid and to reduce curtailment have had limited success to date. Recently, a number of studies have tried to describe a number of barriers that restrict the full utilization of China's installed capacity. Much of the existing research highlights the inadequacy of the country's electricity grid system, specifically its inability to transmit electricity produced by renewable sources generated in remote windand solar rich regions to energy load centers (Wang et al 2010, Li et al 2012, 2014, Pei et al 2015, Zhao et al 2016) The absence of interprovincial power markets owing to the ambiguous authority of various stakeholders over transmission (Davidson 2013) different levels of feed in tariffs (Zhao et al 2012, Pei et al 2015) the lack of a mature, and standardized exchange platform and grid companies' conflicts of interest (Kahrl and Wang 2014) further aggravate grid integration problems. Nevertheless, little has been reported on how the pervasive lack of grid connection and widespread OPEN ACCESS