CO2 Geological storage potential in Korea

Abstract

Abstract According to the forecast of the International Energy Agency (IEA), CCS has the potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and could contribute to 19% of global carbon dioxide mitigation by 2050. Korean government recently announced that Korea has set its voluntary 2020 emissions reduction target to a 30% reduction from its forecast under a ”business as usual” scenario, which is equivalent to 4% less than the 594 million tons of carbon that was emitted in 2005. CCS is included to achieve this target. This paper first explains the CO 2 storage potential both in onshore and offshore areas in Korea. While onshore sedimentary basins seem to have unfavorable physical properties such as porosity and permeability, offshore sedimentary basins exhibit very good physical properties in sand thickness and porosity. In order to implement CCS project at the scale needed to achieve a meaningful reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, the knowledge of the available CO 2 storage capacity obtained by detailed matching of large stationary CO 2 sources with geological storage sites is required. Most CCS programs in Korea, however, are not integrated with capture and storage projects. This paper considers the feasibility of CO 2 capture and storage in Korea and shows several conceptual business models for CCS projects with the recent E&P activities in the continental shelf.