Green Power Trade Behavior in China's Renewable Portfolio Standard: An Evolutionary Game-Based System Dynamics Approach

To promote the consumption of renewable energy (RE), in 2019, China introduced the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) and adopted the weight of consumption responsibility to replace the quota index. This paper investigates the behavioral decisions of green power plants and power sales companies using evolutionary game theory. The results show that RPS becomes effective based on two rules: (1) the unit fine is higher than the transaction cost for power sales companies; and (2) the transaction prices of RE and Trade of Green Certificate (TGC) are greater than the unit transaction cost for green power plants. Taking Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region as an example, the scenario analysis method and a simple system dynamics model are employed to investigate the impact of fines on the green power trade behavior. With different fines, power sales companies are more sensitive than green power plants. These results provide some policy recommendations to promote the consumption of RE.