Publication
Energy transition towards clean, efficient energy supply has been a common sense of the government and public in China. However, lacking reasonable planning will lead to undisciplined development, resource waste, and excessive investment. In this context, this paper investigates potential pathways of Beijing energy transition towards a high-level low-carbon, clean and efficient energy system in 2035 with an extended energysocpe model. Firstly, based on available data, future energy demands are predicted by a newly proposed hybrid forecasting method, which combines the traditional regression model, grey model, and support vector machine model with an entropy-based weighted factor. Secondly, the superstructure-based optimization model is employed to investigate the system configuration and operation strategy of the future Beijing energy system. Finally, the uncertainty impact of electricity price, natural gas price, hydrogen price, and the capital expenditures of electrolyzer and steam methane reforming for hydrogen applications are studied. The forecasting results show that all walks of life will witness a continuously increasing energy demand in multiple sectors of Beijing towards 2035. The planning results suggest that the imported electricity and natural gas will dominate the energy supply of Beijing in 2035 with a contribution of 86% of the energy resources consumption of 384 TWh. Moreover, the energy system presents a high end-use electrification level of 65% and high penetration of efficient technologies, which supply 119 TWh via combined heat and power, 26 TWh via heat pump and 95 TWh via district heating network. The energy use of various sectors of energy resources, technologies and end-use are closely related. Hydrogen will have an increased penetration in the private mobility sector, but the locally generated hydrogen is mainly from steam methane reforming technology.