[Carbon capture and storage (CCS) and its potential role to mitigate carbon emission in China]

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been widely recognized as one of the options to mitigate carbon emission to eventually stabilize carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. Three parts of CCS, which are carbon capture, transport, and storage are assessed in this paper, covering comparisons of techno-economic parameters for different carbon capture technologies, comparisons of storage mechanism, capacity and cost for various storage formations, and etc. In addition, the role of CCS to mitigate global carbon emission is introduced. Finally, China MARKAL model is updated to include various CCS technologies, especially indirect coal liquefaction and poly-generation technologies with CCS, in order to consider carbon emission reduction as well as energy security issue. The model is used to generate different scenarios to study potential role of CCS to mitigate carbon emissions by 2050 in China. It is concluded that application of CCS can decrease marginal abatement cost and the decrease rate can reach 45% for the emission reduction rate of 50%, and it can lessen the dependence on nuclear power development for stringent carbon constrains. Moreover, coal resources can be cleanly used for longer time with CCS, e.g., for the scenario C70, coal share in the primary energy consumption by 2050 will increase from 10% when without CCS to 30% when with CCS. Therefore, China should pay attention to CCS R&D activities and to developing demonstration projects.