Meng Fanxin's Team from the School of Environment Published a Paper in Nature Communications
Recently, the team led by Associate Professor Meng Fanxin from the School of Environment at 91传媒 published a paper in Nature Communications titled "Future rooftop photovoltaics will weaken carbon mitigation but offer promising water and land benefits." Rooftop photovoltaics are a key pathway in the global low-carbon energy transition. Their long-term value, however, goes beyond supplying clean electricity and cutting carbon emissions. Based on a systematic quantitative assessment of 349 Chinese cities, the team found that China's urban rooftop photovoltaic capacity will expand substantially by 2050. Yet as deployment continues to grow, the carbon mitigation benefits of rooftop photovoltaics are expected to weaken gradually. By contrast, their water and land benefits will become increasingly prominent. Accordingly, the study argues that future urban rooftop photovoltaics deployment in China should move beyond a single focus on carbon mitigation. Instead, it should adopt a more integrated deployment framework that better coordinates energy, carbon, water, and land.
The abstract of this paper is as follows:
Rooftop photovoltaics are widely recognized for the carbon mitigation benefits, yet uncertainties persist regarding their future dynamics and broader impacts on water and land. Here we develop a city-level integrated framework to quantify rooftop photovoltaics potential across 349 Chinese cities, and evaluate evolving carbon-water-land tradeoffs under shared socioeconomic and representative concentration pathways. By 2050, projections across 15 combined scenarios indicate China’s rooftop photovoltaic areas will increase by 9.2 to 34.8 percent relative to 2020 levels. Installed capacity ranges from 7.19 to 9.05 terawatts in 2050, expanding rapidly in eastern coastal cities. Under a moderate socioeconomic and climate scenario, the national carbon mitigation benefits peak during 2035 to 2040, accumulating 2.04 to 2.18 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2050. In contrast, the water and land saving benefits continue to rise, reaching 16.5 to 17.4 cubic kilometers and 281 to 297 thousand square kilometers by 2050. These findings underscore the critical need for multidimensional planning to optimize future sustainable photovoltaics deployment.
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