Scenario analysis and assessment of China's nuclear power policy based on the Paris Agreement: A dynamic CGE model

Highlights: • Innovatively developing the dynamic CGE model of nuclear power and China's economy. • Simulating and comparing three different policies at the same time. • Government subsidies have the greatest impact on nuclear power generation. • Energy taxes have the greatest impact on CO2 emission reduction. • Providing unique insights for politicians with conflicting policy objectives. In the 2016 Paris Agreement, which takes effect in 2020, China pledged to slow the growth of its carbon emissions and increase the share of nonfossil energy in its primary energy consumption. To comprehensively evaluate and compare the effects of different nuclear policies under the same background and compensate for the lack of policy comparisons in the field, this paper innovatively develops the traditional computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of nuclear power and China's economy into a dynamic general equilibrium model. We simulate and compare three different policies using the scenario analysis method: improving the level of technology (TC), implementing price subsidies (PS), and levying energy taxes (ET). These scenarios achieve different effects, and the following points can be drawn from the results. First, China should have strong confidence in achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement and the nuclear energy industry has a strong competitive advantage as new energy that can be promoted for development. Second, improving the level of science and technology to make the conversion efficiency reach 40% has the largest impact on the macro economy and a less impact on improving nuclear power generation in these scenarios. Third, government subsidy of 0.4 yuan/kWh have the largest impact on nuclear power generation while a less impact on the macro economy in these scenarios. Fourth, energy taxes have the largest impact on carbon dioxide emission reduction, while the least impact on increasing the share of nuclear power in these scenarios. Finally, we combine different nuclear power policies to meet the different development goals of the government.