Abstract Decarbonizing transportation requires approaches that embed renewable generation into existing infrastructure. Here we show that roadside photovoltaic deployment along China’s roads and railways can be quantified using a geospatial framework that links segmented transport corridors to meteorological grids. The approach maps 480,019 km of transport infrastructure to 4,133 meteorological grids and provides a scalable alternative to coarse regional averaging. Across all deployment scenarios, roadside photovoltaic systems could support 40.91-202.84 GW of installed capacity and generate 56.6-239.2 TWh of electricity annually. Under the baseline scenario, annual generation reaches about 100.6 TWh, equivalent to about 50% of current transport-sector electricity demand. The resulting carbon reduction reaches 33.62-143.97 Mt CO 2 annually. The results reveal strong regional heterogeneity, with North and Central China showing the highest near-term potential, while Northwest China could act as a generation-export region. These findings provide a basis for region-specific infrastructure planning and more coordinated transport-energy system integration.
Wu et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: