关键词: 2℃温升目标, 碳锁定曲线, 燃煤电站, 搁浅资产

Abstract:

As the largest coal power provider in the world, China needs to give more consideration to assess the stranded coal-fired assets, which caused by meeting the Paris Agreement’s long-term goals of capping global warming rise to 2℃ by the end of the 21st century. With an integrated carbon lock-in curves (CLICs) approach, China’s stranded coal power assets were identified under different coal power capacity expansion scenarios (no additional, 200, 300 and 400 GW new coal power units). From a “top-down” perspective, the carbon emission allowances were estimated for China’s coal power sector under 2℃ climate target. From a “bottom-up” perspective, the cumulative carbon emissions of coal power units were calculated, based on the high-precision data of coal power unit in China. Then “interaction up and down” to screen out stranded coal power units. Stranded value of coal power was estimated based upon a cash flow algorithm, with sensitivity analysis on key factors. The counterintuitive finding is, if stabilizing coal power capacity during 2020-2030, China will only incur a sizeable yet acceptable stranded loss around CNY 382 billion, however, continued increase of another 200-400 GW coal power would significantly enlarge the loss to 3.7-8.2 times. Therefore, during the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan period, in order to avoid missing the best time to reduce CO₂ emissions, it is necessary to establish peak coal power capacity and strictly control new coal power plant.

Key words: 2℃ climate target, Carbon lock-in curves, Coal power plants, Stranded assets