A Review on photovoltaic poverty alleviation projects in China: conjunctures, current status and policy recommendations

Abstract

Photovoltaic-based targeted poverty alleviation (PVPA) has been established for 10 years with the mission of one of “the ten large-scale poverty relief programs” in China. This paper would firstly examine the historical conjuncture of the PVPA, followed by the current status and the analysis of policy instruments. Results show that there are mainly three categories of policy instruments: the supply-type ones, the environment-oriented ones and the demand-type ones, with the previous two emphasized. The three most popular policy instruments that governments prefer to use are goal planning, financial support and infrastructure construction. Despite the great achievements, PVPA also need some improvements to be better implemented, and in the last part of the paper, some policy implementations are made regarding the unbalance distribution of the instruments among three above-mentioned classifications, as well as financial issues and accountability factors. It is suggested that governments should pay more attention to the demand-type policy instruments such as procurement or encouragement of the PV power generated by PVPA projects, and at the same time find better ways to supervise the benefit distribution.