The cost of CO2 capture and storage

Highlights • Power plant and CCS capital costs have increased significantly since the SRCCS. • Levelized CCS costs show smaller increases due to changes in other cost factors. • Current CO2 avoidance costs are similar to index-adjusted SRCCS levels. • Selling CO2 for enhanced oil recovery can significantly reduce CCS costs. • Based on current cost ranges all major CCS pathways remain competitive. The objective of this paper is to assess the current costs of CO2 capture and storage (CCS) for new fossil fuel power plants and to compare those results to the costs reported a decade ago in the IPCC Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage (SRCCS). Toward that end, we employed a similar methodology based on review and analysis of recent cost studies for the major CCS options identified in the SRCCS, namely, post-combustion CO2 capture at supercritical pulverized coal (SCPC) and natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) power plants, plus pre-combustion capture at coal-based integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants. We also report current costs for SCPC plants employing oxy-combustion for CO2 capture—an option that was still in the early stages of development at the time of the SRCCS. To compare current CCS cost estimates to those in the SRCCS, we adjust all costs to constant 2013 US dollars using cost indices for power plant capital costs, fuel costs and other O&M costs. On this basis, we report changes in capital cost, levelized cost of electricity, and mitigation costs for each power plant system with and without CCS. We also discuss the outlook for future CCS costs.