Volume 1: Energy Innovations: Accelerated Deployment, New Concepts, and Emerging Technologies

Distributional Justice in Chinese Solar Photovoltaic Power Development under Feed-in Tariff Scheme Bo Bai, Junping Ji, Xiaoming Ma*

Abstract

To promote the development of solar photovoltaics, dozens of countries implemented Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) Scheme in succession. However, accompanied with the increasing installed solar capacity, the issue of unequal distribution of the subsidies also arises due to its implementation. In China, a large number of solar PV stations concentrate in the more developed areas, which means that these areas could get more subsidies from the central government, whilst the burden is borne by all the electricity consumers. In 2014, China launched the Photovoltaic Poverty Alleviation Project (PPAP) to construct solar PV stations for the poor, indicating that the poor can also enjoy the subsidies derived from FiT Scheme. This paper is intended to illustrate the distributional justice of FiT subsidies in mainland China, so as to fulfill the gap of empirical studies in this field. What’s more, whether the implementation of the PPAP could enhance energy justice and become a reference for other countries is also discussed. The results suggest that the distribution of per capita subsidy was increasingly even during the past five years. However, the per area subsidy is significantly correlated with the local economic development, which is inseparable from the provincial preferential policies. As for the PPAP, it can improve the distributional justice to some extent but the impact is slender at current stage.

Keywords Justice; feed-in tariff; Photovoltaic Poverty; Alleviation Projects; subsidy; provincial