Bottlenecks and Technological Developments for Geologic Storage of CO2

There is global consensus that geologic storage is an underpinning technology for large-scale reduction of CO2 emissions. Although CO2 flooding and storage has been employed to promote crude oil recovery, storage of CO2 in aquifers has proven to be the main and fundamental technical route for large-scale geologic storage due to convenient site selection, easy source-sink matching, huge implementation scale, and low storage costs. In view of the deposition characteristics of terrestrial aquifers in China and the practices of underground storage of natural gas, this study identifies three bottlenecks hindering large-scale aquifer storage of CO2 in China (i.e., aquifer storage capacity, storage costs, and long-term safety), and proposes five key fields where technological breakthrough is needed (i.e., assessment of storage capacity, low-concentration CO2 injection, large-scale high-speed CO2 injection, low-cost engineering support, and long-term safety monitoring) to overcome key obstacles in meeting China’s “3060” goals – carbon peaking by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.