Cost Implications of Carbon Capture and Storage for the Coal Power Plants in India

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is the process of extraction of carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial and energy related sources, transport to storage locations and long-term isolation from the atmosphere. It is being considered as a bridging technology, with significant carbon mitigation potential, especially for large point sources such as coal power plants. The present study looks at the technical feasibility and economic viability of any such initiative in the Indian context by means of case studies of individual power plants. The incremental cost of electricity (COE) of the plants retrofitted with CCS has been estimated using the cost data on CCS components from literature as well as using the IECM (Integrated Environmental Control Model) software. The values of incremental COE and the cost of CO2 avoidance have been estimated as INR 2.2-2.6/kWh and INR 2600-3200 per tCO(2), respectively. The costs are highly sensitive to the boiler efficiency and the heat rate of the base plant. The retrofitting of the CCS units in the existing coal plants in India is expected to reduce the net power output of the already inadequate power sector and increase the electricity generation cost substantially. Thus, it would be worthwhile to investigate the necessary and sufficient conditions under which the Indian power plants could graduate to the CCS technologies. (C) 2014 Anand B. Rao. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).