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The ecological protection project of substituting small hydropower for fuel (SSHF) in China is to consolidate the achievements of conceding the land to forestry and natural forest protection, solve the problems of the peasants' fuel and rural energy, protect the ecological environment, and promote the comprehensive development of rural economy and society. It is of great importance to the sustainable development of China in the 21st century. This paper provides a survey of substituting small hydropower for fuel in China. Over the last ten years, using small hydropower to replace the rural living fuel in China has resulted in great fruits. By the end of 2013, 252 SSHF projects had been completed in China, and the newly installed capacity of the SSHF power plants had reached 564 MW (MW). The demand of 1.593 million rural residents for living fuel and energy had been met in a long term, 6.29 million ac-res of the forest area had been protected, and the emission of a large amount of pollutants had been decreased. Moreover, many SSHF projects all over the country are still under construction. With regard to the challenges existing in the development course, some suggestions have been proposed. Implementation of the SSHF project will help realize the harmonious coexistence between human beings and the nature in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewable energy is believed to be the central issue in sustainable development. Literatures on renewables׳ costs are rather sparse, especially on costs of integration and system balancing. The objective of this paper is to fill the research gap by providing an assessment for the cost of China׳s grid-connected renewable energy development and analyze its sharing between different stakeholders. Due to China׳s pricing mechanism of renewable energy and their cost decreasing potential, the pricing model of feed-in tariff and dynamic technological learning processes are employed. In the estimation of purchasing cost, the positive bias is overcome by considering China׳s energy-saving dispatching policy. The results suggest that purchasing cost would be 32.57–40.80 billion Yuan over 2012–2020, and peak in 2017. Grid integration costs which further involve costs of grid infrastructure and system balancing are also investigated. We find that grid infrastructure will cost 27.88 billion Yuan by 2015 and soar to 45.32 billion by 2020, while system balancing will cost 31.49 billion Yuan in 2015 and 63.97 billion Yuan in 2020 among which a substantial part (over 60%) comes from electricity loss in energy transfer. The different parts of these costs are underwritten by disparate participants due to China׳s renewable energy policies and its institutional arrangement. Purchasing cost is shared by power consumers through RES; the cost of grid infrastructure is mainly covered by grid enterprises; and there is no mechanism to specify how to share the cost electricity loss during system balancing which might become a major obstacle for system balancing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, renewable energy plays a vital role in the sustainable development of a society. In China, renewable energy power has developed rapidly since the implementation of Renewable Energy Act. Through a series of specific incentive measures, especially subsidy policies, China's renewable energy power has made great achievements both in technology and application. Based on the state-of-the-art of renewable energy power, this paper comprehensively analyzed the costs and benefits of renewable energy power subsidy in China. The analysis results show the cost of renewable energy power subsidy was 0.248 CNY/kWh between 2006 and April 2011, which was distributed among different renewable energy power types (including wind power, biomass power, and solar PV power) or categories (including electricity price, accessing-grid projects, and public independent renewable energy power system). On the other hand, the renewable energy power subsidy also brings benefits to different aspects of the society. Specifically, the environmental benefit amounted to 17.88 billion CNY, and the benefits of guaranteeing energy security, advancing technology innovation and promoting economic development were also noteworthy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]