Abstract: The power sector is the largest carbon dioxide emitter in China. The coaldominated energy structure poses additional challenges for decarbonization of China's power sector. However, studies focusing on power generation enterprises is still limited in the literature. The paper proposed a linear programming model based on the GAMS software platform to describe the characteristics of power generation enterprises, which will lead to a relatively lagging low-carbon transformation of power generation enterprises and is not conducive to the overall development of the power industry. The model utilizes power balance as the core and includes technical, economic, environmental and other constraints. This enabled the physical reality of current technology to be reflected, making the prediction of future policy and technological development possible. By applying this model, this paper studies the transition path of power generation enterprises to achieve carbon neutrality in 2060 under the current policy and action trends. Furthermore, several scenarios that may appear in the low-carbon transition in the future are simulated. Comparing the transformation pathways under different scenarios, this paper finds that advancing carbon neutrality prematurely will bring a sharp increase in costs for power generation enterprises. The increasing amount of energy storage installations could cause higher transformation cost, but it may also improve the utilization efficiency of thermal power units at the same time. For thermal power like coal-fired power and gas-fire power, this paper proposes to retrofit and install carbon capture and storage facilities on expired units, and apply to peak shaving and emergency backup.

Key words: power sector, power generation enterprises, low-carbon transition, modelling and optimization, carbon neutrality