Capacity of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage in China consistent with the global remaining carbon budget

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is one of negative-emission technologies that must be applied if we are to achieve the 1.5 °C, or even the 2 °C, warming targets of the Paris Agreement. As a start, existing coal-fired power plants could be retrofitted to co-fire with biofuel from agricultural and forestry residues, but the potential and costs of BECCS are as yet unassessed. Here, we modelled an optimal county-scale network of BECCS in China, by considering: spatial information on biofuel feedstock; power-plant retrofitting to increase the use of biofuel; biofuel transport to power stations and CO₂ transport to geological repositories for carbon storage; and BECCS life-cycle emissions. BECCS at marginal costs of $100 per tonne CO₂-equivalent (t CO_2-eq)^-1 could abate net CO_2-eq emissions by up to  Gt yr^-1, assuming that CO₂ emitted by power plants could be captured at 90% efficiency and accounting for additional emissions of greenhouse gases from the production cycle of BECCS. Because of the huge stock of useable agricultural and forestry residues in China, this carbon price leverages 20 times more mitigation of CO₂ emissions by BECCS in China than in western North America. To cap cumulative emissions over 2011-2030 from China’s power sector at 5% of the global remaining carbon budget for the 2 °C limit since 2011, BECCS would require marginal costs of $ (t CO_2-eq) ^-1, or the equivalent of investing 0.45% of GDP to generate 1.22 PWh yr^-1 of electricity by 2030; this would abate 35% more carbon emissions than the announced nationally determined contribution by China. These results clarify the economics of emission abatement by BECCS in China, suggesting that using the available domestic biofuel feedstock has the potential to make a great contribution to global carbon emission mitigation.