A Review of Carbon Capture and Storage Project Investment and Operational Decision-Making Based on Bibliometrics

The research on carbon capture and storage (CCS) project planning and investment and operational decision-making can provide a reference for enterprises to invest in CCS and for policy-makers to formulate policies to promote CCS development. So what are the current research hotspots in this field and the gaps that still need to be further studied in the future? This paper reviews the research in the field by a bibliometric analysis. The results show that the research in this field first focus on cost analysis, followed by project investment evaluation, project planning (cost curve and pipeline network), and project operation. In particular, fossil fuel power plants, pipeline transportation, and oil fields are the most crucial objects in the three technical links of CCS projects, respectively. Policies, carbon pricing, and uncertainty in cost and benefits are factors that are mainly discussed in this field. The methods used for CCS project planning are cost curve model and optimization model. The real option approach is suitable for the evaluation of investment decision-making. The evaluation of operational decision is mostly based on optimization model. The future research directions can be summarized as five points: (1) continuously and systematically update the calculated costs in the current research to the unified price of the latest year; (2) calculate the cost curve from the perspective of emission sources; (3) expand the planning region of pipeline network to the country, continent, and even the entire world; (4) pay more attention to the investment assessment of the CCS project that may be implemented with low cost and high return; and (5) analyze the optimal operation mode of CCS in the low-load power system.