A long-term or a short-term decision when planning the decarbonisation transition pathway of power systems? A case study of China

Achieving ambitious climate goals would require enormous structural modifications in fossil energy-dominated power systems. Unpredictability of the future makes a cautious decision necessary in the low-carbon transition in power systems. Choosing a proper decision method when planning could reduce cost losses when unpredictable emergencies have a disruptive impact on a power system. This is extremely crucial for countries whose power system is still expanding rapidly because their development costs are already high enough and the decarbonisation pathway is uncertain and influenced a lot by the way of decision. Therefore, in this paper, we present a multi-region load despatch transition pathway planning model for power systems with huge demand growth, which can be used for both short-term and long-term decision methods. By comparing the transition costs of various decision-making methods, the decision with lower costs can be obtained. China is taken as a case study. Results show that in order to minimise the cost loss caused by inestimable incidents, China's power system adopts long-term or short-term decisions based on expectations before 2036 or 2041. The cost loss of up to 500 billion CNY can be reduced by selecting a decision method with lower costs according to the rough expectation.