ResearchResearch CenterEnergy Strategy and Low-carbon Development Research Center

Research Center

Affiliated Institutes

01

Urban and Regional Low Carbon Transformation Institute

The Institute focuses on the policy requirements for formulating low-carbon transition and development goals and their implementation paths in various provinces, cities, and districts (counties) across China, continues to provide policy consultancy and sci-tech services for government departments and energy enterprises in more than 20 cities and regions in the fields such as carbon peaking & carbon neutrality goals analysis, development path planning, energy transformation, renewable power planning, and real-time carbon dioxide monitoring, effectively promotes the low-carbon transformation & sustainable development of urban & regional economy and society.

02

Carbon Neutrality Information Management Technology Institute

Leveraging Tsinghua University's talent strengths and social resources in carbon neutrality governance and the related supporting technologies, the Institute addresses key needs in new green-oriented low-carbon energy system and green competitiveness for exporting enterprises. It uses international advanced digital and intelligent technologies to develop an "electrical carbon" integration system that combines two core systems of "virtual power plant" and "carbon monitoring service". This system enhances the digital governance capacity of urban energy for carbon peaking & carbon neutrality, deeply serves the assessment of carbon peaking & carbon neutrality effect and potential, supports export-oriented enterprises in navigating international green trade barriers, and contributes to the establishment of green and low-carbon model cities.

Core technologies/products

Regional carbon peaking & carbon neutrality development path planning and carbon metering technology

• Establish an optimized energy supply and demand system model for 30 provinces in China with multi-energy varieties and multi-time scales. Furthermore, propose the most cost-effective energy dispatching strategy that aligns with national carbon peaking and carbon neutrality objectives, while ensuring energy supply security. Additionally, outline the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality planning pathway for each region.

• Propose a comprehensive regional carbon peaking and carbon neutrality alongside a roadmap and construction blueprint consistent with the timetable, achieving it through an integrated “Eeconomy-Energy-Carbon Emission” model that combines “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches.

• Considering multi-generation technologies considered and power dispatch, establish a long-term power supply planning optimization model for four typical seasonal days, with a time scale of hours, to study and analyze technical options and important decision-making issues in the medium and long-term development of urban and regional power industries, providing methods and approaches to improve the time resolution and technical accuracy of energy planning.

• Established a local carbon reduction goal decomposition model that incorporates principles of fairness, efficiency, sustainability, feasibility and differentiation, and considering key factors such as the local economic & social development stage, energy carbon emission status, resource endowment characteristics, and key projects. It serves as a technical support for local governments to formulate scientific and feasible carbon intensity reduction target decomposition plans.

• Developed the real-time monitoring technology for carbon dioxide emissions from fixed sources with large-section, millisecond and ultra-high precision, which can be used to monitor real-time carbon emissions from fixed sources such as thermal power units, to help enterprises track their real-time carbon emissions and achieve "energy & carbon" dual control, and provide technical support for the improvement of local carbon emission statistical accounting system.

Figure: Sub-regional carbon emission trend map under the national unified strategy under the dual carbon goal

Figure: Carbon peaking & carbon neutrality development roadmap for a city under different scenarios with contribution of carbon emission reduction by sector

Figure: Hourly optimization results of carbon neutrality power system of a province in four seasonal representative days in 2060

Figure: High-precision and real-time monitoring technology for fixed-source carbon emissions

*R&D Team: Urban and Regional Low-carbon Transformation Institute

Digital platform technology of city-level electrical carbon integration

• A smart management platform system that deeply integrates information, digital and intelligent technologies. The digital platform technology combines functions such as "energy-carbon" data monitoring, data integration, diagnostic analysis, scientific prediction, secure data transfer, precise control and intelligent optimization

• The platform relies on information technologies such as the IoT, edge computing, blockchain, and artificial intelligence to achieve highly efficient and secure collaborative control and management across cloud, network, edge, and endpoint devices.

• The platform is coupled with independently developed and academically and industrially recognized methodologies for accounting, development, prediction and optimization, along with measurement and monitoring technology equipment. It is embedded with a real-time updated database of energy consumption, carbon emission (sink) and carbon footprint

  
  

R&D product: City-level electrical-carbon integration platform

Integrating the carbon peaking & carbon neutrality management needs of the power sector, an electrical-carbon integration system is created for low-carbon city governance. In the power sector, a city-level virtual power plant model is proposed for government-grid-enterprise collaboration to improve renewable energy utilization and promote a comprehensive energy service model on the basis of ensuring power security; For carbon peaking & carbon neutrality, the system addresses core needs of government-led carbon governance, enterprise carbon management, and export carbon limits. Digital and intelligent technologies are used to accurately monitor carbon emissions from high energy-consuming industries such as power generation, cement and steel, as well as forestry & grassland carbon sinks, thereby establishing a carbon emissions monitoring and management system. Through shared IoT and data centers, deep integration and expanded application of electrical carbon big data are achieved, providing comprehensive support for electrical carbon footprint traceability, green certificate and carbon market interconnection.

Figure: Model and framework of a virtual power plant

Figure: Technical system of regional carbon emission monitoring and measurement

Figure: Information system of the development and management of carbon sink asset

Figure: City-level electrical-carbon integration platform

*R&D team: Carbon Neutrality Information Management Technology Institute

咨询工作

Application Cases

• Product carbon footprint system

  · Provide carbon footprint management and optimization services for key enterprises throughout the product production process and the whole supply chain。These servises support various needs, including product exporting demand, ESG disclosure demand, other carbon footprint disclosure and emission reduction

  · Quantify the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions of a product or service over its life cycle, including direct and indirect activities.

  · Assist enterprises in one-step solutions for product carbon footprint accounting, carbon footprint certification, and carbon footprint optimization, enabling manufacturing companies to gain an advantage when facing carbon border tariffs or global supply chain requirements from exporting countries.

  
  

  
  
  
  

• Sichuan Yibin city-level virtual power plant

  · By aggregating and exploring the flexible adjustment abilities of dispersed distributed resources, guide users to actively participate in the optimal operation of power system and achieve the optimal allocation of energy resources at the city-level.

  · Guide users to participate in peak & frequency regulation through the power market, promote the integration of clean energy, and improve the stability and reliability of the power grid.

  · Through the integration with local microgrid resources to achieve precise spatio-temporal matching of "supply - storage - use", effectively improving the energy utilization efficiency of microgrid and reducing energy consumption costs

  
  

  

• Applied research on high-precision and real-time monitoring technology of carbon emissions from fixed sources

  The research achievement proposes an integrated solution for high-precision and real-time monitoring of carbon emissions and air volume from fixed sources which has solved the challenge of accurately measuring carbon emissions in large-section flues in real-time and high-precision measurement. This solution provides strong technical support for achieving China’s carbon peaking & carbon neutrality goals. Through the implementation by relevant scientific research institutions and field applications, the precision of high-precision & real-time measurement of carbon emissions from fixed sources and air volume can be improved by an order of magnitude, with the real-time precision controlled within 3%.

  
  

  

  Figure: Demonstration project of high-precision and real-time measurement system for carbon emissions from fixed sources

• Shandong Linyi - Solar thermal carbon monitoring and asset management platform

  · Establish a digital carbon management system for enterprises

  · Enhance the quality of enterprise's carbon emission data through data diagnostic models

  · Improve enterprise's carbon management efficiency, offer various data accounting & analysis functions, and effectively reduce enterprise' carbon data management costs

  · Reduce the cost of enterprise's participation in the carbon market by using the carbon market trading decision support models

  
  

  

  

  

• Anhui Wuhu city-level virtual power plant

  • Guided by policies at both provincial and municipal levels, full coverage is achieved to optimize resource allocation on a larger scale.•

  • Highly integrating data center, distributed solar, storage, and charging resources, to truly achieve the "power generation" ability from peak shaving and valley filling to routine dispatching

  • During the summer of 2022, the city implemented a total of 25 demand responses through the platform, with a cumulative response load of 5.94 million kilowatts and a maximum daily response load of 328,000 kilowatts

  • Form market-oriented operation bodies, break the user-side monopoly, and create a business model that mutually supports integrated energy services, thus promoting the reform of electricity spot market

  • Coupling of energy consumption and emissions monitoring to improve government's governance capacity

  

  
  

  
  

• Application achievements of the medium and long-term low-carbon development optimization model of the power industry under the national unified strate

  A super-structural energy planning model considering more than ten power generation technologies has been established, dividing the country into 17 regions. Considering hourly power balance and unit operating characteristics, the model can be used to study and analyze the technical choices and important decision-making issues in the medium and long-term development of China's power industry. The proposed low-carbon development path for the power sector under different carbon reduction targets has been applied to the publicly released government document - "Long-term Low-emission Development Strategy for Greenhouse Gases in the Middle of This Century", providing technical support for the country to formulate energy development strategies to address climate change

  
  

• Preparation of carbon peaking & carbon neutrality planning and implementation programmes for city and regional governments

  ·Presided over the "Study on Energy Structure Adjustment Guided by Collaborative Pollution Increasing & Carbon Reduction", and proposed the goals and implementation paths of energy structure adjustment under the carbon peaking & carbon neutrality targets of Chengdu, which has been adopted by the "Decisions of the CPC Chengdu Municipal Committee on Optimizing Space, Industry, Transportation and Energy Structure to Promote the Green and Low-carbon Development of the City Guided by Carbon peaking & Carbon neutrality Goals" and the "Action Plan for Energy Structure Adjustment of Chengdu (2021-2025)" issued by the government of Chengdu.

  ·Presided over the "Study on Optimization of Energy Supply and Consumption Development Paths of Chengdu", which provided support for the formulation of the "1+N" policy system for carbon peaking and carbon neutrality in Chengdu. Relevant research achievements have been incorporated into the "Chengdu Implementation Plan for Carbon Peaking".

  ·Presided over the "Research on the Decomposition of Carbon Reduction Goals in 23 Districts of Chengdu City", which has provided scientific basis for the decomposition of carbon reduction goals by the Bureau of Ecology and Environment of Chengdu City. It has also offered important support for the regional cooperative low-carbon development under the coordination of the whole city

  · Presided over the research on "Research Report and Action Plan Formulation on Carbon Peak & Carbon Neutrality of Kunming City", which has provided strong support for the formulation of "Carbon Peak Implementation Plan of Kunming City" and provided important reference for the formulation of policy documents related to carbon peak & carbon neutrality of Kunming City

• Application research on effective control of energy consumption growth to support high-quality development of Sichuan Province

  The research achievement revealed the contradiction between the input of high-carbon energy and the output of low-carbon energy in the energy industry of Sichuan Province, proposed the energy consumption transformation goals and implementation paths in 2030 for Sichuan Province and provided support for Sichuan Provincial Energy Administration to formulate electric energy substitution policies and planning. Through the policy implementation by the Sichuan Provincial Energy Administration, the province achieved 6.023 billion KWH of clean electricity transmission-to-user in 2017, reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 5 million tons and sulfur dioxide emissions by about 30,000 tons. The policy has won the first prize of Science and Technology Progress Award of Sichuan Province in 2019

• Carbon sink asset management of China Forestry Group Corporation

  · Developed and launched a big data platform for carbon sink asset management for China Forestry Group Corporation

  · Provides project services on aspects such as forestry carbon sink methodology development, forestry carbon sink monitoring, forestry carbon sink product design and forestry carbon sink trading mechanisms.