Exploring the diffusion mechanisms of CCS-EOR technology: A quadripartite evolutionary game

As an indispensable constituent of China’ s carbon neutrality technology framework, Carbon Capture and Storage with Enhanced Oil Recovery (CCS-EOR) is crucial for achieving dual-carbon targets. However, the lack of proactive and societal collaboration has hindered the large-deployment of this technology. To address this issue, this paper employs evolutionary game theory to construct a quadripartite game model involving coal-fired power plants (CFPPs), oil companies, the public, and the government to delve into the strategic behavior evolution. The results from numerical simulations on key parameters indicate that (1) Government rewards and penalties, combined with active public participation, drive the system towards stable equilibrium. (2) Government initial subsidies for CFPPs substantially accelerate their investments, while a threshold effect exists for carbon taxes in prompting CFPPs to transit from non-investment to investment, with investment occurring only when the threshold is exceeded. Conversely, oil companies are less sensitive to government intervention as the less impact on oil companies' profit. (3) Increasing public rewards to 1.67 times the baseline level accelerates the time for CFPPs’ investment by four years, further advancing oil companies and government toward stable equilibrium. The findings of this study provide valuable insights for the low-carbon transformation of high-emission enterprises and for the development of low-carbon technologies in society.