Emission reduction path for coal-based enterprises via carbon capture, geological utilization, and storage: China energy group

The goal of carbon neutrality poses significant challenges and opportunities to traditional coal production, processing, and utilization enterprises. Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) is a critical option to reduce carbon emissions for coal-based enterprises. Based on enterprise data and geological data, this study quantitatively evaluates the techno-economic feature and potential of CCUS in China Energy Group using sys-tematical source-sink matching and carbon reduction contribution methods. With the current technical level and only considering the scenario of CO2-enhanced water recovery (CO2-EWR), an enterprise using CCUS to reduce CO2 is feasible. About 73% of the installed capacity of the enterprise is suitable for CCUS, and the cumulative CO2 emission reduction is more significant than 580 Mt/a with 135 g/kWh of the final CO2 emission intensity. Additionally, the emission reduction contribution of CCUS is predicted to be 10%-29.5% from 2020 to 2060. The cost of full-chain CCUS in the enterprise is controllable. The levelized avoidance cost (LAC) of coal chemical plants with a high concentration of CO2 is less than 23 USD/t, the average LAC of coal-fired power plants is 68.6 USD/t, and the average levelized additional cost of electricity is 52.9 USD/MWh. Taking the local feed-in tariff as a standard, the cost of EWR is more competitive than the cost of wind and solar power generation combined with energy storage technology. Considering technological advances and the CCUS hub, which uses common infra-structure to transport and store CO2, EWR costs for coal-fired power will be drastically reduced. Coal-based enterprises can prioritize deploying low-cost CO2-EWR demonstration projects, research and develop key tech-nologies, and form full-chains integrated systems and the CCUS hub. This study provides a basis for coal-based enterprises to reduce large-scale emissions and develop low-carbon transformation through CCUS technology.