Opportunities and barriers for implementing CO₂ capture ready designs: A case study of stakeholder perceptions in Guangdong, China

Abstract

China has been building at least 50 gigawatt (GW) of new coal-fired power plants every year since 2004. In the absence of CO₂ capture ready (CCR) designs, a large fraction of new coal power plants built in the next decade could face ‘carbon lock-in’. Building on the existing engineering and economic literature on CO₂ capture ready, the aim of this study is to understand the opportunities and challenges in implementing CCR in China. In early 2010, opinion-leaders perceptions towards implementing CCR in Guangdong with two empirical phases are presented: an online consultation of 31 respondents (out of a sample of 82), three face-to-face focus group discussions including 16 officials from five power plants and two oil companies in the Guangdong province. A majority of respondents in the online survey were engineers. The survey results are compared with an earlier study of stakeholders’ views on demonstrating CCS in China, conducted in April 2009 as part of the EU–UK–China Near Zero Emissions Coal initiative (NZEC) project.

Introduction

Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) could be an important technology to decarbonise the Chinese coal-dominated electricity sector (Liu and Gallagher, 2010). On average, approximately 1 gigawatt (GW) of new coal-fired power plants begins construction in China every week but there are no incentives to support the large scale deployment of CCS in China. CO₂ capture ready (CCR) is a design concept to ease retrofitting fossil fuel plants¹ to capture carbon dioxide (CO₂) in their lifetime. Building new plants in CO₂ capture ready design is crucial in terms of preventing new plants ‘carbon emission lock in’ in China. A research project which examined 74 coal-fired power plant sites in China (where total installed capacity at each site is equal or larger than 1 GW) found that only 19% of sites appear to have a high retrofitting potential (Li, 2011).

Globally, a number of studies have been conducted to investigate the engineering requirements and a working definition for carbon dioxide capture readiness (CCR)² (IEA GHG (International Energy Agency Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme), 2007, IChemE (Institute of Chemical Engineering), 2007, FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office), 2008, Lucquiaud and Gibbins, 2009), its political feasibility (SCCS (Scottish Center for Carbon Storage), 2008, Markusson and Haszeldine, 2009), techno-economic aspects (Bohm et al., 2006, Liang et al., 2009), planning issue (Li et al., 2011), and potential financing mechanisms (Liang et al., 2010). Studies have apparently not been undertaken, however, to explore key stakeholders’³ acceptance and perception of implementing CCR design in their new coal plants. This paper builds on the CO₂ capture ready study by IEA GHG (2007) and a stakeholders’ consultation for the NZEC (EU–UK–China Near Zero Emissions Coal) project on the general perceptions of developing CCS demonstration projects in China (Reiner and Liang, 2009). The aim of this study is to understand the engineering, economic, and policy issues of implementing CO₂ capture ready design concepts on new build coal-fired power plants immediately.

Guangdong is a pioneer of economic reform in China and one of the richest provinces. Guangdong contributes approximately 12% of the total national economic output with 7.8% of the total population in China and has a nominal GDP per capita of $7000 (OECD, 2010, SBGP (Statistics Bureau of Guangdong Province), 2011). Guangdong aims to gradually establish a green energy system with a short term goal of reducing the GDP carbon intensity by 19.5% from 2010 to 2015 (Central Government, 2012). From 2006 to 2010 Guangdong closed 12 GW of small and less efficient thermal power plants in response to the national policy of ‘replacing small thermal units by large units’. As of March 2010, 16 GW of ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plants with a unit capacity of 1000 MW were in the construction stage⁴ (SERC, 2010). These advanced, large power plants in construction and others in planning, in the absence of CCR design, may be subject to ‘carbon lock-in’ (i.e. it would be infeasible to retrofit the plants to capture CO₂ in their lifetime) (Li, 2011). Therefore, a survey of plant managers and engineers from the energy industry in the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong was conducted, with the objective of understanding their perceptions on implementing CO₂ capture readiness, in particular:

• Stakeholder willingness to implement CO₂ capture ready designs in fossil fuel power plants;

• Identification of the key engineering factors cited by interviewees which potentially affect the implementation of CO₂ capture ready designs;

• Understanding cost performance expectations and what potential incentives could trigger CO₂ capture ready investment.

This is the first survey with a focus on CO₂ capture ready issues in China and is designed to provide information on a range of aspects of CCR implementation that are of relevance to policy makers, power plant investors, and engineers. The format and methodology of the survey could form the basis for further work on this area in the run up to the possible introduction of CCR in other regions of China and other developing countries.