Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 12, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-21786-0
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Funding
- Bloomberg Philanthropies
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [71673085, 72074075]
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The key strategy for achieving China's 2060 carbon neutrality goal and the global 1.5 degrees C climate goal is to swiftly transition away from unabated coal use. By evaluating existing coal plants and prioritizing those that consistently perform poorly, a high-ambition, plant-by-plant phaseout plan has been structured to achieve complete phaseout by 2045 and 2055.
More than half of current coal power capacity is in China. A key strategy for meeting China's 2060 carbon neutrality goal and the global 1.5 degrees C climate goal is to rapidly shift away from unabated coal use. Here we detail how to structure a high-ambition coal phaseout in China while balancing multiple national needs. We evaluate the 1037 currently operating coal plants based on comprehensive technical, economic and environmental criteria and develop a metric for prioritizing plants for early retirement. We find that 18% of plants consistently score poorly across all three criteria and are thus low-hanging fruits for rapid retirement. We develop plant-by-plant phaseout strategies for each province by combining our retirement algorithm with an integrated assessment model. With rapid retirement of the low-hanging fruits, other existing plants can operate with a 20- or 30-year minimum lifetime and gradually reduced utilization to achieve the 1.5 degrees C or well-below 2 degrees C climate goals, respectively, with complete phaseout by 2045 and 2055. A key strategy for meeting China's 2060 carbon neutrality goal and the global 1.5 degrees C climate goal is to rapidly shift away from unabated coal use. Here, the authors detail how to structure a high-ambition, plant-by-plant coal phaseout in China while balancing multiple national needs.
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