• Energy Research
• 1. No poverty close

Abstract Approximately seven million population in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau of China, a global climate sensitive region, still rely primarily on yak dung for household cooking and heating. The treatment and combustion of yak dung result in a variety of negative impacts in terms of local alpine grassland degradation, indoor air pollution, public health risk, as well as global climate change. There is an urgent need to explore alternative pathway for affordable and clean energy as indicated in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. This perspective has analyzed the key challenges rooted in yak dung use on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau region. Based on this, this perspective has further proposed a new complementary energy system to take advantage of locally available, clean and sustainable energy sources of wind and solar power, and have provided economic analyses. Meanwhile, this perspective has pointed out the potential barriers to promoting the new complementary energy system in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau region due to traditional habits, economic factors and policies. Finally, strategies for transitioning from yak dung to the proposed alternative energy system is discussed at the end. Successful energy transition for the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau region offers an important option to achieving many other sustainable development goals related to climate change, economic development, and environment. The perspective is expected to shed light on the development of sustainable energy in other developing region or countries in the world to address multiple societal goals.

Abstract China’s energy transition, from a coal-dominated system to one with the world largest deployment of wind power, is facing major challenge as China entered the economic “New Normal” in recent years. A key phenomenon is serious wind curtailment, where potential clean wind power is abandoned and the associated environmental and climate benefits could not be fulfilled. Multiple causes have been identified to explain the serious wind curtailment in China; but few studies provide explanations for the patterns of wind curtailment and quantify the relative contributions of the underlying factors. We develop a flexible analytical framework and adapted the logarithmic mean Divisia index method to quantify the contributions of key factors in the change of wind curtailment rate. While the early stage of wind curtailment was constrained by limited transmission capacity, recent wind curtailment is primarily driven by the deceleration of the overall economic growth, which resulted in a slowdown of electricity demand and low willingness-to-accept imported power across provinces. The current economic transition has induced an oversupply of power in general and wind power in particular, especially in wind rich provinces. This seems to be hindering further energy transition. With greater political will and better policy design, the oversupply of power could be an opportunity to speed up substitution of coal with wind and to expedite the de-carbonization of the economy.