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Limiting climate change to 1.5°C and achieving net-zero emissions would entail substantial carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere by the mid-century, but how much CDR is needed at country level over time is unclear. The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed description of when and how much CDR is required at country level in order to achieve 1.5°C and how much CDR countries can carry out domestically. We allocate global CDR pathways among 170 countries according to 6 equity principles and assess these allocations with respect to countries biophysical and geophysical capacity to deploy CDR. Allocating global CDR to countries based on these principles suggests that CDR will, on average, represent ∼4% of nations total emissions in 2030, rising to ∼17% in 2040. Moreover, equitable allocations of CDR, in many cases, exceed implied land and carbon storage capacities. We estimate ∼15% of countries (25) would have insufficient land to contribute an equitable share of global CDR, and ∼40% of countries (71) would have insufficient geological storage capacity. Unless more diverse CDR technologies are developed, the mismatch between CDR liabilities and land-based CDR capacities will lead to global demand for six GtCO2 carbon credits from 2020 to 2050. This demonstrates an imperative demand for international carbon trading of CDR.

Biomass co-firing technology is a potential solution for low-carbon transition of coal-fired power plants. Existing techno-economic analyses of this technology fail to consider indirect benefits, such as avoided losses from technology retrofitting, and the heterogeneity across regions. To address these limitations, we developed five types of techno-economic indicators to analyze six possible future scenarios for the application of this technology in 29 provinces of China, based on regional heterogeneous data. The results show, first, generally, the higher the local coal price, the local on-grid electricity price, the biomass feed-in tariff subsidy, and the carbon trading price, the greater the incentives and benefits for biomass co-firing. Second, bio-electricity tariff subsidies greatly increase the incentives for technology retrofitting, with 26 of the 29 provinces analyzed having sufficient incentives for retrofits in this scenario. Third, biomass co-firing technology has more revenue potential when emission quota is limited than when it's not. Our results indicate that a timely tightening of the CO 2 emission quotas of the coal power sector will stimulate technological retrofits even without additional policy incentives, while more plants retrofitted will achieve positive returns with additional incentives. [Display omitted] • A biomass cofiring technology scenario-economics assessment model is built. • Five types of techno-economic indicators for six future scenarios are analyzed. • Indirect revenues of biomass co-firing technology are considered. • Tighten the CO 2 quota will stimulate the impetus of technological retrofit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]