Yuan, J., Yang, X., Cui, R., Fang, F., Zhang, J., Ren, Y. (2025). The social impacts on China’s vulnerable cities in the transition away from coal power. iScience.
- Only 10% of cities in China are severely affected by the coal power transition
- Building new coal power capacity increases socio-economic shocks
- Energy-efficient retrofits can alleviate accumulated shocks
- About 60% of losses in vulnerable cities are attributable to other provinces
Abstract
To achieve China’s carbon neutrality goal, the power sector will undergo a radical transition, which entails accelerated retirements of unabated coal-fired power plants. To identify the most impacted vulnerable areas, we quantify the changes in employment and tax revenue at the city level under different coal power transition scenarios. We find that only 10% of cities in China are severely affected under power transition, which are concentrated in coal resource provinces. These identified vulnerable cities bear the highest shocks across all different transition pathways tested. Accelerating retirements, reducing utilization hours, and energy-efficient retrofits can effectively alleviate the accumulated shocks at the end and allow smoother transitions. In addition, about 60% of employment and tax revenue loss in vulnerable cities are driven by the plant closure in other provinces. Our findings reveal large regional differences that require tailored strategies and policy supports for a just transition of the power industry.