The Study Of China’s Wind Power And PV Development Pathways Considering Metal Availability

Tackling the system science problems behind the “energy-metal” relationship has become one of the greatest challenges that humans facing toward low-carbon and sustainable energy transition.Wind-power and PV infrastructure are expected to rapidly deploy to meet the increasing electricity demand under China’s carbon neutrality target.Both wind-power and PV highly rely on metal input,which may trigger the potential supply and demand mismatch due to the growing metal demand.It becomes increasing urgent to gain deep understanding of how the different wind power and PV development pathways may affect the metal supply shortage,in order to put forward strategies to help achieve the carbon neutrality goals.This dissertation focuses on China’s wind-power and PV development pathways,using different tools and methods(energy system model,dynamic material flow analysis,system assessment tools and optimization methods)to account the metal requirement under different pathways,assess the metal criticality under different pathways,assess the pathways consider metal availability and optimize the wind-power and PV pathways consider metal availability.The results show that:(1)There exists huge uncertainties among wind-power/PV pathways and scenarios under the carbon neutrality target.By2060,the average installed capacity of PV and wind-power in China are 3517 GW and2435 GW under the multi-model comparison framework,which may increase 9.3-19.6times and 4.6-20.7 times respectively compare with the level in 2020.(2)The metal requirement of wind-power and PV show increase trend during the study period,while wind-power sector consumes more metal than the PV sector.The annual demand of neodymium and dysprosium increase 10 times in 2060 compare with that in 2020.The cumulative metal inflow of PV and wind-power is 240-430 million ton and 490-1160 million ton during year 2021-2060,which account for 90-95% and 92-96% of the total inflow during the year 2000-2060.(3)The uncertainties of energy development pathways magnify the imbalance of metal supply and demand.Though China has resource advantages in rare earth elements and by-product metals,the production capacity of tellurium and dysprosium needs to enlarge.The criticality rate of 12 metals is as follow:copper,nickel,tellurium,silver,zinc,cadmium,aluminum,steel,dysprosium,indium,gallium and neodymium.(4)After considering the metal availability,the wind-power and PV development pathways show “first slow and then fast” trend.There will be 3.4-15%metal reduction after the optimization of pathways.Taking energy scenario 7 as an illustration,there are more metal reduction potential in PV pathways than in wind-power pathways.To essentially solve the metal shortage problem may need other strategies besides energy development pathways optimization.The policy implications are:(1)It’s necessary to put forward metal development strategies in line with the wind-power and PV development under the carbon neutrality target from national level.(2)It’s urgent to build national stock-piling mechanism for critical metal.(3)China should encourage the technology improvement as well as commercialize of circular economy in the end-of-life period of energy infrastructure.(4)Promoting carbon emission control in mining industry.(5)Incorporating metal availability into future renewable energy planning.