Spatially explicit analysis identifies significant potential for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage in China.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 34039971.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-23282-x and PMC identifier 8154910.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
As China ramped-up coal power capacities rapidly while CO<sub>2</sub> emissions need to decline, these capacities would turn into stranded assets. To deal with this risk, a promising option is to retrofit these capacities to co-fire with biomass and eventually upgrade to CCS operation (BECCS), but the feasibility is debated with respect to negative impacts on broader sustainability issues. Here we present a data-rich spatially explicit approach to estimate the marginal cost curve for decarbonizing the power sector in China with BECCS. We identify a potential of 222 GW of power capacities in 2836 counties generated by co-firing 0.9 Gt of biomass from the same county, with half being agricultural residues. Our spatially explicit method helps to reduce uncertainty in the economic costs and emissions of BECCS, identify the best opportunities for bioenergy and show the limitations by logistical challenges to achieve carbon neutrality in the power sector with large-scale BECCS in China.