Reassessing renewability and carbon-neutrality of photovoltaic systems in China: From factory-level evaluation based on the most complete and current inventories to national scale implications

Despite the rapid expansion of photovoltaic systems under China's dual carbon goals, quantitative assessments of their nonrenewable energy savings and carbon mitigation benefits, grounded in the most comprehensive and up-to-date inventories, remain scarce. By compiling a high-resolution inventory that includes previously overlooked equipment, material and service inputs, this study evaluates performances of a representative photovoltaic plant newly constructed in Tibet from climate and economic perspectives, and scales up results to the national scale by integrating 8969 operating plant-specific data across China. Results reveal that the latest photovoltaic system has achieved exceptionally high levels of renewability (92.28 %) and carbon neutrality (90.31 %) compared to standard supercritical coal-fired power plants. The macro-level picture shows that photovoltaic plants built nationwide have offset 2.04 % of China's total carbon emissions by 2020, with projected cumulative benefits from planned solar PV deployment by 2050 contributing 27.48 %–69.34 % toward the national carbon neutrality goal. Correspondingly, the avoided climate-driven economic damages during 2010–2020 were comparable to government's investments in photovoltaic systems related incentive policies. These results can help us formulate geospatially heterogeneous policies to make full use of the benefits obtained by solar PV systems in planning carbon neutralization roadmap, achieving environmental sustainability, economic viability and the trade-offs between them.