Are city-level PV deployment pathways compatible with SDGs?

In our study, for the first time, different goal-oriented city-level PV deployment pathways are explored and the trade-offs and synergies between different SDGs, including climate change mitigation, air quality improvement, water savings, and employment creation, are elucidated.

Why are PV installations growing so fast in China?

(3) The rapid growth of PV installations in China, from 1 Gigawatts (GW) in 2010 to 306 GW in 2021, is attributed to significant policy and financial support (e.g., direct fiscal subsidies, preferential loan interest rates, and tax incentives (4−6)) from the central government.

How can Chinese electricity system optimization be used for solar PV deployment?

Therefore, we employ the widely used Chinese electricity system optimization model based on the one-node-per-province network of Liu et al. (2019) (46) to project the differentiated power mixes, energy storage demands and interprovincial electricity transmission capacity under different solar PV deployment scenarios.

How important is trade for metal supply in China's PV sector?

Both metals have similar and high cumulative supply pressure in China’s PV sector, which highlight trade’s importance for metal supply in PV’s industry. For base metal, cumulative demand in China’s PV sector is 17.3–22.8 times in 2050 than in 2018.

Is crystalline silicon a good choice for solar PV?

Solar technology development—including crystalline silicon, multicrystalline silicon, thin films, compound semiconductors and nanotechnology 14 —has facilitated access to solar PV systems at increasingly competitive costs. The efficiency of monocrystalline silicon solar cells was only 15% in the 1950s, but had increased to 26.7% by 2018 15, 16.

How much does PV cost in China?

In terms of manufacturing, the production cost of PV modules in China has dropped to nearly CNY2 W p−1 (W p, watt-peak) (US$1 = CNY6.23 in 2015, according to The World Bank), and system equipment investment has dropped (as of 2018) to a global leading level of nearly CNY5 W p−1 (ref. 19).