How a 30-year transition to carbon neutrality will affect the electricity supply costs?

Abstract

The Chinese government has set long-term goals for carbon neutrality and the development of renewable energy (RE). Despite the expected precipitous decline in the costs of RE technologies, the necessary massive investments in new RE capacities and the external costs of renewable intermittency will increase electricity costs. A group of researchers from Tsinghua University and Harvard University have developed a power system expansion model to comprehensively evaluate how a 30-year transition to carbon neutrality will affect these electricity supply costs. This model incorporates RE supply curves, operating security constraints, and the characteristics of various generation units to assess the cost variations accurately ^[1] .