Material stocks and flows of power infrastructure development in China

As the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases with a dominant share of coal-fired power, China is expecting a continuous clean power transition in the next decades. However, the development of power generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure requires significant amount of construction materials, therefore an understanding of the corresponding materials demand and waste generation would be important. In this paper, we deployed a dynamic, bottom-up, and technology-specific material flow analysis approach to characterize the stocks and flows of four major construction materials (cement, steel, aluminum, and copper) associated with China's power infrastructure development from 1980 to 2050. We found that the material stocks of China's power infrastructure have increased from 30 +/- 4 Mt in 1980 to 573 +/- 91 Mt in 2018 (an annual growth rate of 7.7%) and will further increase to 1188 Mt and 1487 Mt in 2050, respectively, in the two energy development scenarios we constructed. While thermal and hydro power contributed the most to stocks growth in the past two decades, solar and wind power are expected to contribute more in the future. A more metal-intensive energy future is foreseen due to increasing use of steel and aluminum in renewable energy generation and use of copper and aluminum in power transmission and distribution. These patterns reflect the physical material basis of China's power transition and call for better understanding of the energy-material nexus for addressing the dual challenge of satisfying growing materials demand and addressing increasing amount of waste and environmental impacts in the next decades.