Use of CCS Corridors for Large-Scale Decarbonization of Coal-Fired Power Plants

In this study, we propose the concept of carbon capture and storage (CCS) corridors for the large-scale decarbonization of clusters of coal-fired power plants (CPs). In a CCS corridor, four or more high-capacity (≥1000 MW) CPs with a combined CO2 emission of 50 Mtpa or larger are retrofitted with CCS. The CO2 captured from the CPs is transported via a shared network of pipelines to a saline formation less than 300 km away for permanent storage. Furthermore, we propose four field development concepts for connecting individual CPs to the corresponding CO2 sink. A CO2 source-sink mapping exercise using these field development concepts is conducted with input data from a global database of 2400 CPs. This resulted in the identification of six potential first-of-a-kind CCS corridors. They are the Yangtze River Mouth CCS corridor, Ningbo Bay CCS corridor, Bohai Bay CCS corridor, Pearl River Mouth CCS corridor, Incheon Bay CCS corridor, and Singruali Lake CCS corridor. The first four are in the east coast of China, the fifth is in South Korea, and the sixth is in India. These six CCS corridors will capture and sequester up to 488 Mtpa of CO2 emissions from 35 CPs, corresponding to 7% of CO2 emitted from Asian CPs. Future work needed to progress these projects is discussed.