Energy Saving and Emission Reduction in Power Generation Sector for China's Heat Pump Heating

China is ranked as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2). The CO2 emission from urban central heating (UCH) is responsible for 4.4% of China's total CO2 emission. It is proposed that heat pump heating (HPH) could serve as a replacement for UCH to help realize energy-saving and emission-reduction goals to a greater extent. In northern China, 30% of urban building area is covered by urban decentralized heating (UDH). Replacing UDH with HPH is the current trend in China. In this paper we analyze the impact of replacing coal with heat pumps on the power generation sector in China. The results show that HPH has a positive impact on the power generation sector. By considering simultaneous replacement of UCH and UDH with HPH, the efficiency of power generation at the valley electricity time is increased by 0.512%; the ratio of peak valley difference is decreased by 25.3%; the obtained reduction of CO2 emission cumulatively contributes to approximately 10.96% of this target.