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Top1. Introduction
With urbanization and industrialization, social development has become increasingly dependent on electricity and has led to an increasing proportion of electricity consumption in terminal energy consumption in recent years. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the share of thermal electricity generation accounted for about 72% in 2019 in China. Moreover, the CO2 emissions from coal-fired power account for more than 34% of the total CO2 emissions in China (Chen and Lin, 2020a). China faces enormous pressure to reduce emissions and has set the following goals. Firstly, increase the proportion of non-fossil energy consumption to 20% by 2030. Secondly, reduce the intensity of CO2 emissions by 60%-65% before 2030 compared with 2005’s (Chen and Lin, 2020b). Renewable energy electricity has the same electricity use value as thermal power generation and has more environmental and ecological benefits (Guo et al., 2014). Therefore, increasing the proportion of renewable energy in electricity generation can not only meet the demands of social and economic development but also alleviate environmental problems and delay the process of climate change (Lin and Chen, 2020; Ramos and Rouboa, 2020; Bui and Tseng, 2022).
Renewable energy electricity is usually more expensive than thermal power. Additionally, the capital recovery time required for developing renewable energy is longer than conventional energy, and financing renewable energy projects is more difficult. Therefore, the development of renewable energy requires huge investments and many subsidies. From a long-term perspective, demand-side measures are effective to promote renewable energy power consumption and stimulate innovation in renewable energy technologies (Lin and Chen, 2019b; Dubey et al., 2022). For example, a mandatory mechanism that forces everyone to pay additional taxes and surcharges or a mechanism that voluntarily subscribes to green electricity certificates, (Xie and Zhou, 2018; Knapp et al., 2020) is usually recommended. Moreover, public acceptance is another important factor which affects the development of renewable energy and the innovation of renewable energy technologies (Wüstenhage et al., 2007).