Carbon Capture and Storage
Coal based CCS in India’s Low Carbon Electricity Transition: Prospects and Challenges
June 2021 | Policy Brief
Mitavachan Hiremath, Peter Viebahn & Sascha Samadi
Suggested Citation: Hiremath M, Viebahn P, Samadi S. (2021): Coal based CCS in India’s Low Carbon Electricity Transition: Prospects and Challenges. SusPoT-Centre for Sustainability, Wuppertal Institute: Bengaluru, Wuppertal.
Partner Organization: Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy
What is it about?
In this policy brief, Mitavachan Hiremath from the SusPoT-Center for Sustainability and Peter Viebahn and Sascha Samadi from the Wuppertal Institute’s Division of Future Energy and Industry Systems (Germany) assess coal-CCS pathways in India up to 2050. They compare coal-CCS with conventional coal, solar PV and wind power sources through an integrated assessment approach coupled with a nexus perspective (energy-cost-climate-water nexus). The findings of the study highlight that coal-CCS in India not only suffers from typical new technology development related challenges—such as a lack of technical potential assessments and necessary support infrastructure, and high costs—but also from severe resource constraints (especially water) and the competition from outperforming renewable power sources in an era of global warming.
The authors recommend that these challenges would have to be comprehensively addressed if coal-CCS should play a significant role in low carbon electricity transition not only in India, but in the Global South in general. (Coal) CCS should, however, be further developed as a backstop technology because, even if it is not available on a large scale until 2030 (or later) in India, it could be used to retrofit existing coal power plants in future and could also become integrated with energy intensive industries where there are often no alternative low-carbon options. The policy brief, therefore, adds a considerable level of techno-economic and environmental nexus specificity to the current debate about coal-based large-scale CCS and the low carbon energy transition in emerging and developing economies in the Global South, taking India as a case study.
This brief is a policy makers’ summary of the scientific article „An Integrated Comparative Assessment of Coal-Based Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Vis-à-Vis Renewable Energies in India’s Low Carbon Electricity Transition Scenarios“ published in „Energies 2021“ (Volume 14; Issue 2). The policy brief and the article can be accessed free of charge via the links provided.
