Cost Estimation of Fossil Power Plants with Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage

CCS will play an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit global warming to 2° Celsius by 2050. Amongst other things, both the costs and the technologies associated with CCS are subject to uncertainties. Cost estimations in the literature vary significantly. Some analyses provide cost estimation for CCS as a generic value, giving only a few distinctive technical options and only a few attempts to investigate the costs separately for each technology. The objective of this paper is therefore to analyze the cost spectrum for CCS provided by different studies and to determine realistic cost estimations for carbon dioxide capture and storage, as well as to investigate the impact of costs on the economic maturity of CCS. Results show that costs of CCS vary significantly along the CCS process chain. Furthermore, it becomes apparent that further efforts need to be taken, both in technology development and in terms of the willingness of an economy to pay high prices for mitigating CO2 emissions, before CCS may be referred to as economic feasible.