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More than half of current coal power capacity is in China. A key strategy for meeting Chinas 2060 carbon neutrality goal and the global 1.5 °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 °C or well-below 2 °C climate goals, respectively, with complete phaseout by 2045 and 2055.

China's electricity system is the world's largest, in terms of installed generating capacity, and is also the world's largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2015, China embarked on reforms in its electricity sector that aim to introduce market mechanisms in wholesale pricing. This study provides a quantitative assessment of the economic and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission impacts of transitioning to electricity markets in China, focusing on Guangdong Province. We find that market reforms deliver significant annual cost savings (21 to 63 billion yuan, 9%–27% reduction in total costs in a base case) to consumers in Guangdong, with smaller production cost savings (12 billion yuan, 13% reduction in production costs in a base case). Savings for consumers are accompanied by a large reduction in net revenues for coal and natural gas generators, raising concerns about generator solvency, longer-term resource adequacy, and the need for transition mechanisms. Market reforms increase CO2 emissions in Guangdong, as a result of gas-to-coal switching, though higher hydropower imports from neighboring provinces could offset these emissions. CO2 pricing has a limited impact on CO2 emissions in the short run and has the potential to lead to significant wealth transfers. The most important benefit of market reforms will be in providing an economic framework for longer-term operations and investment.

In spite of ambitious investments by the Chinese government in renewable energy sources, the country's investment in coal power accelerated in recent years, raising concerns of massive overcapacity and undermining the central policy goal of promoting cleaner energy. In this paper, we ask why this happened, focusing on policies that incentivized excessive entry in the coal power sector and using a simple economic model to illustrate the policies' effects. Using coal-power project approval records from 2013 to 2016, we find the approval rate of coal power was about 3 times higher after approval authority was decentralized, with larger effects in regions producing more coal. We estimate that local coal production accounts for an additional 54GW of approved coal power in 2015 (other things equal), which is about 1/4 of total approved capacity in that year. Key words: Coal power, Renewable energy, Overinvestment, Industrial policy, Political economy, China, 1. INTRODUCTION Since 2005, the Chinese government has engaged in an ambitious effort to move China's energy system away from coal and towards more environmentally friendly sources of energy. The [...]