The role of biomass in China’s long-term mitigation toward the Paris climate goals

Abstract

Biomass is a crucial option of substituting fossil fuels to reduce emissions, and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) allows for obtaining net-negative emissions. We explore the role of biomass in China’s long-term mitigation toward the Paris climate goals in light of three narratives and five mitigation scenarios, modeling by a refined Global Change Assessment Model. While presenting a limited contribution to achieving China’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), biomass plays an important role in China’s post-NDC mitigation toward the Paris climate goals. All the assessed scenarios call for extensive biomass use, accounting for 6.5%–28% of China’s 2100 primary energy in our three 2 °C scenarios and 15%–30% in our two 1.5 °C scenarios. The exact biomass deployment trajectories tend to depend greatly on how China envisages national mitigation paces and BECCS strategies. For either 2 °C or 1.5 °C, a smaller negative-emission narrative, which means a more rapid immediate decarbonization of the energy system toward mid-century, depends on larger bioenergy in medium-to-long-term. Delaying short- and medium-term ambition delays bioenergy applications but requires far more in the second half of the century to create greater negative emissions via BECCS. Moving from 2 °C toward 1.5 °C features higher and earlier bioenergy deployments and meaningfully increasing BECCS volumes and biofuel shares in China’s energy system. Consequently, the Chinese stockholders might be ready to make a decision on to what degree biomass and BECCS enter the sphere of China’s energy and climate policies, which will greatly influence not only national biomass roadmap but also mid-century mitigation targets.

Keywords

• biomass
• China’s mitigation
• Paris agreement
• BECCS
• climate change