Minimizing carbon footprint using pinch analysis: The case of regional renewable electricity planning in China

Renewable energy has a more important role to play in China's power sector, especially at the regional level. Renewable electricity in China has made great progress on the basis of national policies. However, the promotion of renewable electricity sector at the regional level is still hampered by local issues. China needs to solve some challenging barriers related to implementation of polices for the development of renewable electricity. These barriers stem largely from availability and reliability constraints. Systematic planning techniques are needed to fully utilize abundant renewable energy resources. In this work, an improved graphical pinch analysis-based approach is presented, which considers carbon-constrained regional electricity planning and supply chain synthesis of biomass energy at the regional level in rural China. The minimum renewable energy target is identified by Carbon Emissions Pinch Analysis (CEPA). Next, a demand-driven approach is applied to synthesize the biomass supply chain network to meet the established target in a given region. A detailed case study of Laixi County in China is used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach for policy-making to promote utilization of renewable electricity at the regional level. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.