A Study on Inter-Regional Cooperation Patterns and Evolution Mechanism of Traditional and Renewable Energy Sources

Abstract

To obtain the early realization of carbon peak and carbon neutrality in China, this study explores the cooperative relationship of inter-regional energy power-generation substitution between regions dominated by traditional thermal power and renewable energy sources (RES). By taking a regional government as the decision-making subject, focused on interest and environmental factors, an evolutionary game model of inter-regional energy cooperation is structured, and a simulation platform of the two different power-generation replacement cooperative patterns/strategies is constructed by using system dynamics. Then, the influences of the sensitive parameters on the cooperative evolutionary path under symmetric and asymmetric sharing cost cases have been discussed based on practical example in the regions of China. The results imply that agents can only select the favorable cooperative strategies unilaterally, by choosing a strategy of sharing the environmental revenues rather than the cooperative costs. When the failure cost of the opportunity revenues is less than or equal to the RES power-generation cost, a traditional thermal power regional government adopts a cooperative no-sharing strategy, while an RES regional government selects the opposite strategy. However, under the optimized dynamic proportional allocation schema, it is more likely that the traditional thermal power regional government will prefer cooperative sharing strategies, which can promote the social value of RES. This study provides beneficial inspiration for the Chinese government to further improve its RPS policy. The RES consumption fulfilled by direct or indirect trans-regional energy cooperation can be included in the RPS index framework assigned to traditional thermal power energy regions, and the added environmental value should be regarded as being as crucial as the economic and energy factors are in the cooperative process. In addition, RES regions that contribute more to clean energy absorption should raise the weight of the RPS rewards.