Planning for an electricity sector with carbon capture and storage

Before energy companies will invest in power plants with CCS, appropriate climate policy should be in place, a need for new power plants must exist, CCS technology should be cost-effective, and CO2 transport infrastructure and CO2 sinks must be available. In order to get more grip on planning, we carried out a quantitative scenario study for the electricity and cogeneration sector in the Netherlands using the energy bottom-up model generated with MARKAL. We analysed strategies to realise a 15% and 50% reduction of CO2 emissions in respectively, 2020 and 2050 compared to the 1990 level. We found that, if nuclear energy is excluded as a mitigation option, CCS can be sufficiently cost-effective in 2020 to avoid 29 Mt per year in 2020 in the Dutch electricity sector (which is half of the CO2 emission abatement necessary in this year). We identified the following important factors for planning. In a postponement strategy in which CO2 is reduced from 2020, CO2 can be abated at less than 30 €/t up to 2020. A gradual reduction of 2.5% annually from 2010, asks for a climate policy that makes expenditures possible of 50 €/t CO2 before 2015. Construction of coal-fired power plants without CCS are preferably not built or, in the postponement strategy, only to a limited extent. Finally, early planning is required to realise the construction of a transport infrastructure with a length of around 450 km before 2020.