Assessing the regional adaptive capacity to renewable portfolio standard policy in China

The implementation of renewable portfolio standard (RPS) policy may bring some adverse effects when the region lacks of the capacity to cope with policy stresses. This paper proposes an analytical framework of adaptive capacity index to RPS policy (ACI-RPS) and apply it to evaluate the provincial adaptive capacity to RPS in China over time. The results show that the ACI-RPS in China displayed an increasing trend but declined slightly in 2017 due to the technical bottlenecks. There was a wide disparity in ACI-RPS across the provinces in China, with eastern provinces having the highest but northeastern provinces having the lowest scores. These results indicate that provincial RPS targets need to be set with reference to their adaptive capacity and local energy status. Specifically, more ambitious targets may be assigned to eastern, southern, and northern provinces. It is concluded that the promotion of power grid construction and the acceleration of power marketization are two effective ways to further improve the capacity to cope with RPS policy of a region.