Virtual power plant in China's electricity-carbon-green certificate markets: A system dynamics analysis of inter-provincial trading

China's new power system faces dual challenges: inefficient aggregation of distributed energy and underdeveloped inter-provincial trading mechanisms. Virtual power plant (VPP), leveraging its resource integration and flexible scheduling capabilities, could mitigate these issues. This study employs a system dynamics model to simulate VPP participation in coordinated electricity-carbon-green certificate markets, designing five trading scenarios for two provincial VPPs (VPP1: high-demand; VPP2: renewable-rich). Results show: (1) inter-provincial price disparities—carbon emissions and green certificate trading prices vary by 7%–30% and 3%–49%, respectively, enabling VPPs to exploit arbitrage opportunities; (2) heterogeneous revenue structures—inter-provincial carbon-green certificate trading enhances VPP1's carbon emissions trading market revenue more than its tradable green certificate market revenue, whereas VPP2 exhibits the opposite trend; (3) revenue optimization—inter-provincial electricity trading increases total income for VPP1 and VPP2 by 14.1% and 28.1%, respectively, with electricity sales remaining the primary revenue stream; and (4) divergent sustainability impacts—VPP1 reduces carbon emissions by 53% (138.7t), whereas VPP2 faces a 42% (3.5t) increase due to coal-based backup generation. In addition, VPP2 avoided the expiration of 149 500 green certificates. This study highlights the necessity of province-specific trading policies, maximizing the advantages of the VPP to align economic incentives with emission reduction goals.