**1. Introduction**

China has committed to peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 ("30/60 targets"). Reaching the 30/60 targets demands a dramatic scaling up of clean energy. Heating is the largest energy end-use sector, accounting for half of the global final energy consumption and more than 40% (13.1 Gt) of worldwide energy-related CO2 emissions in 2020 [1]. More than one-quarter of global heat is produced and consumed in China, where the heat sector remains heavily reliant on fossil energy [2]. Renewable energy plays a critical role in decarbonizing and providing a greener energy supply option [3]. However, for a long time, renewable energy sources of heating (renewable heating) have been neglected in favor of a focus on renewable electricity, with less than 10% of energy supply coming from renewable energy sources.

The deployment of renewable energy in the heating sector should be accelerated to meet 30/60 targets, which will also bring additional benefits, including decreasing air pollution emissions and enhancing energy security [4]. However, there are still many obstacles to overcome, such as high capital costs, low prices of fossil fuels, and subsidies for fossil fuels. Policy intervention is needed to overcome the economic and non-economic barriers faced by the sector. In the past 20 years, China has already formulated some policies to support the deployment of renewable energy in the heating sector; however, there have been few systematic reviews of the existing renewable heating policies, and the key factors in designing the policies are still not well understood.

Besides, the majority of literature on renewable heating focus on specific renewable modes, e.g., geothermal, biomass, wind power heating etc. [5–7], analysis of the effectiveness of renewable heating systems [8–11], and evaluation of the impact of policies on

**Citation:** Xiong, C.; Hassan, M.S. Renewable Heat Policy in China: Development, Achievement, and Effectiveness. *Sustainability* **2022**, *14*, 9297. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su14159297

Academic Editors: Luis Hernández-Callejo, Jesús Armando Aguilar Jiménez and Carlos Meza Benavides

Received: 15 June 2022 Accepted: 25 July 2022 Published: 29 July 2022

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**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

energy use, climate change, and technology penetration [12–14]. These efforts have assisted in gaining a better understanding of the renewable heating system; however, the policy itself is rarely studied, especially when it comes to the implementation level. In China, policy implementation is crucial due to its special administrative structure [15]. Zhang et al. evaluated the energy saving and environmental policies in China, and proposed that the effectiveness of these policies are largely determined by the implementation level factors, including the instruments applied and the intensity of the policy itself [16,17]. However, few studies have evaluated renewable heat policies from these perspectives.

To fill the aforementioned research gaps, this study covers three aspects. Firstly, the development and framework of renewable heat policies formulated in the last 20 years are reviewed to construct a broad picture of the policy system. Secondly, the policies are clustered according to the instruments applied to bolster a quantitative analysis and obtain an in-depth insight into the dynamic development process. Finally, suggestions to establish a more efficient renewable heat policy system are provided. The results of this study will contribute to a comprehensive understanding of China's renewable heat policy and will shed light on policy design and implementation in the future.
