A Review of CCUS Development in China: Technological Progress, Policy Challenges, and Commercialization Opportunities

CCUS is considered one of the key pillars of China's dual-carbon objectives and has emerged as a vital mechanism to facilitate decarbonization of the power generation and the energy-intensive industrial sector, as well as emerging sectors within China. To that end, this paper summarizes relevant literature related to CCUS both technical and policy recent developments in the CCUS landscape in China, bottlenecks that may be encountered near term through the capture, transport, storage and utilization components of CCUS, and provides approaches to close the demonstration to commercialization gap. This includes an examination of the technologies associated with carbon capture and their integration with power and industrial systems in China (including post-combustion, pre-combustion, and oxy-fired combustion) and the infrastructure for transporting and storing CO2 (including pipelines, ships, offshore options, and regional hubs), the methods of storing CO2 (including geological, mineralization, and marine storage), and the methods of utilizing CO2 (including CCU, BECCS, and DAC) in relation to the policy, market and governance environments in China. Key enablers of CCUS that are identified and discussed in this paper include CCUS industrial clustering, shared CO2 transport/storage hubs, data-driven surveillance and monitoring, and China-specific financial instruments that are designed for use by domestic institutions. This paper also discusses the variability between different regions of China in terms of policy maturity, financial appetite, and infrastructure preparedness, where there are differing views of maturity, economics, or governance, we identify such inconsistencies and assess potential implications to strategy development. Finally, we present research agendas and considerations for policy development that would facilitate the acceleration of the commercialization of CCUS in China, including an emphasis on industrial cluster deployment, having strong MMV protocols in place, and utilizing market instruments to ensure that CCUS efforts will assist in supporting the achievements of the long-term national decarbonization goal.