Socio-economic Impact of Concentrated Solar Power in China: Example of a 50 MW Parabolic Trough Plant

China is a leading developer of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) projects in the world. As it pursues to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, a substantial growth in renewable deployment including CSP is foreseeable. Despite rapid growth of CSP deployment globally and within China, there are limited studies of socioeconomic impacts of CSP projects. Existing studies either focused on other renewable technologies or regions outside of China. This study took a first approach to examine CSP in the region of China, aiming at quantifying the potential socio-economic impacts of a 50 MW demonstration plant using parabolic trough technologies under the SinoTrough project. Multipliers for output, employment, income, and value added were derived from China’s 2019 Statistical Yearbook and national Input-Output-Table from 2017. The multipliers were applied to the Jobs and Economic Development Impacts (JEDI) CSP Model, which estimated the potential employment, earnings, economic output, and value added created from construction and annual operation of the plant. The analysis demonstrates that a 50 MW CSP plant in China can bring considerable benefits to its economy. During construction more than 1200 jobs are created on site. Over a lifetime of 25 years of operation plus one year of construction, such a plant would generate in total about 2,267 million USD income, 451 million USD economic output, and 928 million USD value added. The impacts calculated through the model respond almost linearly to changes in multipliers and costs, which tend to fluctuate in response to economic dynamics.