Study On The Strategies And Their Economic Impacts For Reducing Air Pollution Emitted By Coal-fired Generation In China

It has been an universally consensus that the green approaches,including energy conservation and emission reduction are the mainstream of world development.General Secretary Xi Jinping has also pointed out that,the ecological environment protection is not only a major political issue,but also a significant social issue related to the people's livelihood in China.At present,the air pollution has become a prominent environmental problem,which is acting as a non-negligible obstacle to develop Chinese economy and improve people's happiness.Coal-fired power generation has been one of the main air pollution sources.In 2015,the coal-fired power generation has contributed China's 32.49% sulfur dioxide?42.14% nitrogen oxide and 18.47% dust emissions.Therefore,measures to reduce air pollution emitted from coal fired power generation are vital for China to implement green development strategy and win the “Blue Sky Protection Campaign”.China's primary energy endowment is characterized as being in abundance of coal,while in lack of crude oil and nature gas.Thus,coal will occupy the main position of China's primary energy consumption for a fairly long time.And also,for the national energy security and economy in power consumption,it is unlikely for China to shut down all its coal fired plants,or remove them all into the neighbor countries.Coal-fired power generation will still be the main force in China's power generation for long until the renewable energy,such as the wind power and solar power generation can solves their problems of reliability,and economy.Meanwhile,the electrification and urbanization are increasing with China's economic development,and they will boost the electricity demand.Thus,the control of air pollution from coal-fired power generation in China is facing a severe situation,and it is urgent to take regulatory measures.It should be clearly recognized that,China's coal-fired power generation air pollution is a systemic problem,and its causes include many social,economic,and technical factors.The mechanism of these factors is relatively complex,and the relevant control strategies will produce comprehensive effects in economic,social and environmental aspects.The research in this article follows the main logical line of "raising questions,exploring causes,analyzing mechanism,proposing countermeasures,discussing the effectiveness and feasibility of countermeasures,analyzing the macro impact of countermeasures".Under this logical thinking framework,this article has done some innovative research,as follows:Firstly,this study innovatively expand and improve the STIRPAT model to identify the main driving factors for atmospheric emissions from coal-fired power generation in China.Based on existing research,this study combines the statistical data and production practices to expand and improve the driving factor identification model.According to the fitting results between model assumptions and statistical data,the methods of GME and PLS are synthetically used to evaluate the model parameters.Furthermore,the entropy weight method and principal factor analysis method are used to determine and compare the importance of various explanatory variables(driving factors).Secondly,this study constructs a system dynamic model to analyze the mechanism of how the identified driving factors working in the pollutant emitted by coal-fired power generation in China.Step one,this study analyzes the causal relationship between driving factors.Step two,expand the causal relationship to make a graph of China's coal-fired atmospheric emissions flow and inventory.Step three,using the Mathematical methods to determine the quantitative relations among the variables.Furthermore,the accuracy of the dynamic model is demonstrated by comparing the simulation results and actual statistics.According to the logic chains among variables in the dynamic model,this study proposes several assumptions to control the pollutants emitted by coal-fired power generation for the period from 2020 to 2025.Thirdly,this study comprehensively uses the methods of system dynamic,operations research,and game theory to discuss the validity,technical feasibility,and economic rationality of the measure assumptions.Step one,by using the simulation function of the system dynamic model,the effectiveness of the measure assumptions in improving the power generation efficiency,optimizing the power generation structure and reducing the pollutants emitted by coal-fired power generation.Step two,by using the method of operational research,the possible technical feasibility of the measure assumptions issued in this study is transformed into discussing the existence of multi-objective planning solution.By solving the multi-objective planning solution,the technical feasibility of regulation strategy hypothesis is discussed.Step three,by using the game theory,the economic rationality of the measure assumptions issued in this study is transformed into discussing the existence of the game strategy solution,and the economic rationality of these control strategy hypotheses under the relevant market mechanism is discussed.Fourthly,a dynamic computable general equilibrium model of China'selectricity-economy-environment model is built and the impact of the measure assumptions issued in this study on the economic system is analyzed.Step one,based on the 2015 social accounting matrix,this study constructs a dynamic computable general equilibrium model that describes China's macroeconomics in the year of 2020.Step two,the parameters of socio-economic backgrounds,and the parameters of coal-fired power generation atmospheric pollution control measure assumptions are substituted into a dynamic computable general equilibrium model,then this study simulates and predicts the macroeconomic consequences of the measure assumptions to be implemented during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period,and proposes and tests the effects of supporting optimization strategies.The studies made above respectively solve the issues of “what are the main driving factors of the current atmospheric emissions of coal-fired power generation in China”,“how are the relevant factors working”,“which variables can be used for reducing the atmospheric pollutants emitted by coal-fired power generation in China”,and “whether the control measure assumptions are effective,feasible,or reasonable”.Results and conclusions can be obtained as below:Firstly,it is proved that the following nine factors are significantly related to the air polluted by coal-fired power generation in China: “per-capita income”,“population”,“the primary energy consumption in power generation”,“urbanization rate”,“intensity of electricity consumption”,“electrification level”,“operation cost on atmospheric environmental protection facilities”,“power generation structure”,and“electricity consumption structure”.According to the importance of their contributions to air pollution,the following two variables of “intensity of electricity consumption” and “electrification level” are most important.The four variables with relatively strong explanatory are “per-capita income”,“population”,“the primary energy consumption in power generation”,and “urbanization rate”.The variables with the weakest explanatory are “operation cost on atmospheric environmental protection facilities”,“power generation structure”,and “electricity consumption structure”.Secondly,based on the analysis of the causal relationship among the driving factors.The 9 driving factors are expended to 51 relative variables,so as to describe the logic links and how the factors are working in air pollution system,and the system dynamic model of air pollution by coal-fired power generation in China is constructed.The simulation test results of the model show that,the system dynamic model constructed in this study is accuracy,and it can quantitatively describe the mechanism of how different factors and variables working in the air pollution by China'scoal-fired power generation.Thirdly,the integrated simulation made by the system dynamic model in this study show that,in the future 5 years,the quantity of China's electricity demand and power generation will grow rapidly,and it leads to a severe situation that the pollutants emitted by coal-fired generation will grow rapidly synchronously.In this context,from the system dynamic model built in this study,it can be found that,the approaches of optimizing power generation structure,improving power generation efficiency,encouraging and increasing the inputs of decontamination technology.Specifically,limiting the utilization hours of coal-fired power plants is key to the approaches of optimizing power generation structure and improving power generation efficiency.Continually increasing the cost on the inputs of dust elimination and desulphurization facilities are vital and useful,and the carbon capture and storage(CCS)facilities should be introduced into the industry to face the threat of the increasingly serious global warming.In addition,providing appropriate subsidies is vital to encourage enterprises to invest in the environmental protection facilities.Fourthly,the measures proposed in this study is effective,and they are technically feasible and economically reasonable.The exogenously limits on the utilization hours of coal-fired power generation can significantly optimize the power generation structure and improve the power generation efficiency.But the effects on power generation structure optimization and efficiency improvement are not enough to curb the rapid growth trend of coal-fired power generation and coal consumption.Therefore,in the scenarios,when assuming to increase the investment on environmental protection facilities,such as desulfurization and dust elimination,and CCS devices,the results show that pollutants are reduced.The effectiveness of the control measures issued in this study is confirmed.However,the increasing costs on environmental protection facilities will shock the generation costs.It is necessary to provide subsidies to control the cost fluctuations in coal-fired power generation.Moreover,the subsidy price for decarbonization in power generation should not be set as a fixed value,but should be calculated according to the quantity and raw material cost of coal-fired power generation.Fifthly,the pollution control measures assumed in this study has some negative macroeconomic consequences.Although the CPI can be reduced slightly if the measures are implemented,the GDP growth rate is slowed down to a greater extent,and it will lead to reductions in most industrial sectors' outputs.It is found that these negative economic consequences should be attributed to the assumptions of providingmore environmental subsidies.In order to obtain less negative economic consequences,it may effective to set the strategy of reducing the electricity price of the industrial sector to a certain extent as a supplementary to the measure assumptions issued in this study.Sixthly,the intensity of the measure assumptions issued in this study should be matched with the development levels of society,economy and technology.This study hypothesizes two scenarios to set the possible and different groups of social,economic and technological parameters,and in each scenario,two sub-scenarios are put forward to compare the different effects of the measure assumptions in different intensities.By comparing the results comprehensively,the appropriate measure intensity for the specific social or economic background can be selected.Therefore,the research method system constructed in this study can be used as a comprehensive tool for more possible and potential scenarios,by simulating and evaluating the results,the appropriate intensity strategy can be obtained.This study comprehensively applies multi-disciplinary theory and flexibly uses a variety of tools and methods in the research,not only improves the relevant theoretical models,but also improves and enriches the application of some methods,and makes positive attempts in model integration.First,this study improves the driving factor identification model,analyzes and verifies the rationality of this improvement;second,this study attempts to dock the system dynamics model with operations research,game theory,and computable general equilibrium model.Realize the analysis of the effectiveness and feasibility of the control strategy,and evaluate the impact of the control strategy on the economic system.Practice has shown that this docking method can effectively make up for the functional shortcomings of the single model.Third,the conclusions obtained in this study can be a reasonable choice for decision makers,the formulation and control of economic and social development backgrounds and the regulation of atmospheric emissions from coal-fired power generation provide scientific theoretical support and recommendations.Finally,"driver identification analysis driver mechanism simulation strategy effectiveness demonstration strategy feasibility-" macro effect evaluation strategy "is a comprehensive thinking system and model method,which can be useful in solving other similar problems.