科研成果 by Year: 2022

Heating decarbonization is a major challenge for China to meet its 2060 carbon neutral commitment, yet most existing studies on China's carbon neutrality focus on supply side (e.g., grid decarbonization, zero-carbon fuel) rather than demand side (e.g., heating and cooling in buildings and industry). In terms of end use energy consumption, heating and cooling accounts for 50% of the total energy consumption, and heat pumps would be an effective driver for heating decarbonization along with the decarbonization on power generation side. Previous study has discussed the underestimated role of the heat pump in achieving China's goal of carbon neutrality by 2060. In this paper, various investigation and assessments on heat pumps from research to applications are presented. The maximum decarbonization potential from heat pump in a carbon neutral China future could reach around 1532Mton and 670Mton for buildings and industrial heating respectively, which show nearly 2 billion tons CO2 emission reduction, 20% current CO2 emission in China. Moreover, a region-specific technology roadmap for heat pump development in China is suggested. With collaborated efforts from government incentive, technology R&D, and market regulation, heat pump could play a significant role in China's 2060 carbon neutrality.

Growing national decarbonization commitments require rapid and deep reductions of carbon dioxide emissions from existing fossil-fuel power plants. Although retrofitting existing plants with carbon capture and storage or biomass has been discussed extensively, yet such options have failed to provide evident emission reductions at a global scale so far. Assessments of decarbonization technologies tend to focus on one specific option but omit its interactions with competing technologies and related sectors (e.g., water, food, and land use). Energy system models could mimic such inter-technological and inter-sectoral competition but often aggregate plant-level parameters without validation, as well as fleet-level inputs with large variability and uncertainty. To enhance the accuracy and reliability of top-down optimization models, bottom-up plant-level experience accumulation is of vital importance. Identifying sweet spots for plant-level pilot projects, overcoming the technical, financial, and social obstacles of early large-scale demonstration projects, incorporating equity into the transition, propagating the plant-level potential to generate fleet-level impacts represent some key complexity of existing fossil-fuel power plant decarbonization challenges that imposes the need for a serious re-evaluation of existing fossil fuel power plant abatement in energy transition.

Summary A growing number of governments are pledging to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century. Despite such ambitions, realized emissions reductions continue to fall alarmingly short of modeled energy transition pathways for achieving net-zero. This gap is largely a result of the difficulty of realistically modeling all the techno-economic and sociopolitical capabilities that are required to deliver actual emissions reductions. This limitation of models suggests the need for an energy-systems analytical framework that goes well beyond energy-system modeling in order to close the gap between ambition and reality. Toward that end, we propose the Emissions-Sustainability-Governance-Operation (ESGO) framework for structured assessment and transparent communication of national capabilities and realization. We illustrate the critical role of energy modeling in ESGO using recent net-zero modeling studies for the world's two largest emitters, China and the United States. This illustration leads to recommendations for improvements to energy-system modeling to enable more productive ESGO implementation.