Research characteristics and trends of power sector carbon emissions: a bibliometric analysis from various perspectives

Power sector carbon emissions (PSCEs) have received an increasing attention due to their huge contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. Herein, the research characteristics and trends of PSCEs are investigated based on bibliometric analysis. The basic growth trends, contributions of the most productive countries/territories, institutions, authors, journals, and subject categories are analyzed systematically. In addition, the major research fields and research trends are investigated by the keywords co-occurrence analysis and topic evolution. The result indicates that PSCEs research has developed rapidly in the past 20 years, and the proportion of research funding has increased from 0 at the beginning to 73% in the last 5 years. Especially, the number of scientific publications has shown an explosive growth after the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2016. The People’s Republic of China (PR China), the USA, and England are the three most dynamic countries in the field of PSCEs research, with 64.8% of the total number of published papers. The most productive institutions are also from these countries. Based on keywords co-occurrence analysis, it is concluded that driving factors, prediction, impacts, and countermeasures of carbon emission are three major research fields. The result of thematic evolution indicates that the topics on energy transition, life cycle assessment, marginal abatement cost and energy policy have been the research hotspots in recent years. This study presents an worldwide overview of PSCEs research, thus helping the stakeholders to quickly grasp the research trends and conduct future work.