The impact of carbon capture and storage on coal resource depletion

Carbon Capture and Storage is being actively developed for deployment in fossil fuel power stations in an attempt to reduce future emissions of CO2 due to concerns about climate change. The deployment of this technology will cause an inevitable reduction in the overall efficiency of any electricity generation plant leading to an increase in demand for the fossil fuels used to power the generation process. This paper estimates the average reduction in generation efficiency caused by the imposition of Carbon Capture and Storage and considers its effects upon the depletion rate of global coal reserves. Future production of coal is modelled using a symmetrical production curve. The results suggest that the widespread adoption of Carbon Capture and Storage may result in the exhaustion of coal reserves several decades in advance of when this may happen if CCS is not deployed.