Recently, the latest research result by Professor Wang Zhaohua's team at Beijing Institute of Technology was published in the form of research article in Nature Energy. Professor Wang Zhaohua of the School of Management and Economics of Beijing Institute of Technology is the first author, and Dr Li Hao, Zhang Bin and Wang Bo are the co-corresponding authors of the paper. The partners include scholars from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, etc.. Beijing Institute of Technology is the first author unit of the paper.

It has become a global consensus to accelerate the low-carbon energy transition and actively respond to climate change, and clean replacement of coal power has become a key focus. China, Germany, India and other countries that mainly rely on “combined heat and power " will face a huge heating gap and urgent pressure of clean heating system transformation. Despite China's abundant clean heating resources, the impact of coal power phaseout and clean heating transformation on the heating burden of residents in different regions has not been fully explored. How to design a reasonable phaseout path for coal power plants, build diversified clean heating paths, and minimize the heating burden of residents are the key scientific problems that need to be solved urgently. To this end, professor Wang team using global change analysis model (GCAM) of climate target driven China heating system clean transformation system research, analyzes the future time and space evolution of the city of northern China "combined heat and power" heating capacity, urban heating demand and residents heating cost, identifies the optimal coal-fired power plant retirement path, quantifies the coal-fired power plant early retirement of the urban heating system and residents heating burden, and further reveals the hidden energy inequality behind the climate target.

Zhaohua Wang, Hao Li*, Bin Zhang*, Bo Wang *, Hao Li, Xin Tian, Jiang Lin, Wei Feng.Unequal residential heating burden caused by combined heat and power phase-out under climate goals.Nature Energy (2023).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-023-01308-6

Paper link: https: / / www.nature.com/articles/s41560-023-01308-6#citeas