Regional resource distribution of onshore carbon geological utilization in China

CO2 geological utilization (CGU) technologies have a great potential to enable large-scale CO2 storage at reasonable cost and is widely considered to be a strategic technology option to help reduce CO2 emissions. CGU technology can be applied to enhance the recovery of oil (CO2-EOR), natural gas (CO2-EGR), underground water (CO2-EWR), coal-bed methane (CO2-ECBM), shale gas (CO2-ESGR), geothermal energy (CO2-EGS), in situ uranium leaching (CO2-IUL), and others. The first step in evaluating of CGU technologies is to determine the storage resource, technical readiness, and geographical distribution of CO2 storage resources. This paper presents preliminary evaluation results on storage resource, technology readiness level and geographic distribution of onshore CGU in China; the results were obtained by performing a resource evaluation methodology, technology readiness level (TRL) method, and geographic information system tool. Results indicate a significant resource for onshore CGU technologies and good proximity in some parts of China. However, CO2 storage resources with high TRLs and low cost are located in the northeast, northwest, and southeast regions and not in the south and coastal areas of China, where most CO2 emission sources locate. Therefore, the timeframes and options for CGU deployment in different regions vary. This situation indicates that different regions have to perform CO2 mitigation by employing different CGU technologies at different timeframes.