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Unequal residential heating burden caused by combined heat and power phase-out under climate goals

Nature Energy volume 8, pages 881–890 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

The early retirement of coal-fired power plants to achieve climate goals creates significant challenges for heating systems, especially in regions heavily reliant on coal-fired combined heat and power (CHP). While China has access to abundant heating alternatives, the effects of measures taken to meet climate goals on household heating burden remain largely unexplored. Here we project the spatiotemporal evolution of CHP heating capacity, urban heating demand and residential heating costs in northern urban China under different climate goal scenarios. We found that the heating loss from the early retirement of coal-fired power plants is equivalent to the heat provided by installing solar photovoltaic heating on at least 17.8% of European Union rooftops. Further analysis showed that replacing CHP heating with clean alternatives will disproportionately increase residential heating costs, particularly in economically disadvantaged areas. These findings underscore the potential social risks and injustices when implementing coal retirement strategies. We should formulate policies to address this issue to facilitate the transition towards clean and affordable space heating.

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Fig. 1: The spatiotemporal distribution of CHP heating gaps in northern urban China for different retirement strategies under the carbon-neutral goal.
Fig. 2: Heating losses of different retirement strategies under the carbon-neutral goal.
Fig. 3: Spatiotemporal differences in the TACPC and heating burden in northern urban China under the carbon-neutral goal.

Data availability

The unit-level data on Chinese coal-fired power plants used in this analysis were taken from the Global Coal Plant Tracker dataset (Global Energy Monitor, accessed August 2022; https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-coal-plant-tracker/). The future population and GDP data are available at https://www.scidb.cn/en/detail?dataSetId=73c1ddbd79e54638bd0ca2a6bd48e3ff. The city-level prediction dataset for heating demand and CHP heating capacity in northern urban China under different climate scenarios towards 2060 are presented in Supplementary Data 1. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The Global Change Analysis Model is an open-source integrated assessment model, available at https://github.com/JGCRI/gcam-core/releases.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Fund of China (grant nos. 72141302 (Z.W.), 91746208 (Z.W.), 72222017 (B.Z.), 72174023 (B.Z.), 71774014 (B.Z.), 72243001 (B.W.) and 72074026 (B.W.)) and the Key Research Projects of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the China Ministry of Education (grant no. 21JZD027 (Z.W.)).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China

    Zhaohua Wang, Hao Li, Bin Zhang, Bo Wang & Xin Tian

  2. Center for Sustainable Development and Smart Decision, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China

    Zhaohua Wang, Bin Zhang, Bo Wang & Hao Li

  3. College of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China

    Hao Li

  4. Beijing Municipal Center for Building Energy Efficiency and Building Material Management, Beijing, China

    Xin Tian

  5. Electricity Market and Policy Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Jiang Lin

  6. Department of Agricultural and Resources Economics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Jiang Lin

  7. Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China

    Wei Feng

  8. Faculty of Materials Science and Energy Engineering, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Wei Feng

  9. Building Technology and Urban Systems Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Wei Feng

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Contributions

Z.W. and H.L. (ORCID: 0000-0002-6739-2008) designed the study. B.Z. and H.L. (ORCID: 0000-0002-6739-2008) implemented the model and wrote the paper. B.W. and J.L. assembled input data and analysed the results. H.L. (ORCID: 0000-0002-8469-1587), X.T., J.L. and W.F. contributed to the interpretation of the results. Z.W., H.L. (ORCID: 0000-0002-6739-2008), B.Z., B.W., H.L. (ORCID: 0000-0002-8469-1587), X.T., J.L. and W.F. discussed the results and implications and commented on the paper at all stages.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Hao Li, Bin Zhang or Bo Wang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information

Nature Energy thanks Hongxun Liu, Natasa Nord and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–10, Tables 1–4 and Notes 1–3.

Supplementary Data 1

Computational data and supplementary scenario data.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 2

Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 3

Statistical source data.

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Wang, Z., Li, H., Zhang, B. et al. Unequal residential heating burden caused by combined heat and power phase-out under climate goals. Nat Energy 8, 881–890 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-023-01308-6

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