This report is based on our analysis and engagement in China, working with OGCI
member company CNPC and leading Chinese experts. It finds that CCUS will be essential for China to achieve its target of carbon neutrality by 2060, providing up to 2.7 Gt of emissions reductions annually by 2050.
In addition to climate benefits, CCUS will also create social and economic benefits, helping China to maintain economic growth, strengthen its market position in low carbon energy and secure energy supply.
China currently has 16 large-scale CCUS projects in the pipeline, with one in operation and five scheduled for completion this year. Deploying CCUS on the scale needed to meet carbon neutrality will require a range of new policies to commercialize CCS, create viable business models and help a CCUS industry to emerge. China can draw on early experience in other countries to develop appropriate market incentives, subsidies and mandates.
CCUS hubs, providing collective transport and storage infrastructure for carbon dioxide captured from different industrial and power sources, will facilitate China’s CCUS scale up. CNPC’s China Northwest hub, part of OGCI’s hub initiative, is underway and CNPC has three additional hubs in planning.
If China can accelerate CCUS deployment in the power, steel, cement, chemicals, hydrogen and fertilizer sectors at the scale needed to achieve carbon neutrality, it would catalyze the global CCUS industry – bringing down costs while demonstrating its potential, as happened with solar power.
