Integrating the Delphi survey into scenario planning for China's renewable energy development strategy towards 2030

Abstract Although scenario planning and the Delphi survey are widely used in long-term strategy planning, their combinations have not received enough attention, especially in the improvement of efficacy in scenario planning. The crucial step of scenario planning is the effective identification of the uncertain and most influential drivers and key factors. This paper integrates the Delphi survey into scenario planning. It proposes a four-step analytical procedure of Delphi survey-based scenario planning: identifying the key ingredients from Delphi results, establishing the causal relationships among key ingredients, scenario development, and scenario description. The integrated method has been adopted in the planning practice for the renewable energy development strategy towards 2030 in China. Based on the three uncertain and most influential drivers, “technology development,” “ecological awareness,” and “national energy pricing,” most possibly influencing the renewable energy development towards 2030 in China, a novel three-dimensional scenario analytical framework composed of eight future scenarios is constructed. Considering the possibility in China's practice, five scenarios are selected as possible development scenarios of China's renewable energy towards 2030. This paper develops possible policy choices for each selected scenario.