5. Conclusions
This paper aims to explore how niche innovators and incumbents capitalize on their resources and power to create, augment or weaken prevailing political path-dependencies and lock-in of the prevailing electricity supply system to prospect a future energy transition in China, by introducing political economy perspective in socio-technical transition. The findings can be summarized as follows.
First, renewable energy has generated feedback effects in China. Several landscape development have destabilized the prevailing electricity supply system to open the window for renewable energy manufacturing to emerge as a niche innovation, and their emergence prompts the government to release ambitious renewable energy targets, supporting their further deployment and falling cost.
Second, incumbent coal power have capitalized on their resources and power, to organize an alliance to be consistent with the government policy orientation while blocking institutional reforms for energy transition, at the cost of high renewable curtailment.
This implies that China will stay at the hybrid system with a large renewable curtailment as long as the government keeps strict price control and disregards system operation efficiency. The coal consumption cap will merely result in coal price hike and forced shutdown of coal power and mines. UHV and long-distance transmission may result in proliferation or consolidation of coal power without simultaneous development of the 220 kV and 500 kV network connecting renewable power to the grid. While the government announces to fund 100 billion yuan for unemployment [106], its financial support for foreign business of coal industry and power poses a risk of international displacement of coal consumption and carbon emission [107].
