As a key technology to promote the achievement of the "dual carbon" goals, the standardization of Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) has made crucial progress.
Recently, the State Administration for Market Regulation officially approved and released 12 national standards for CCUS. This series of standards will be fully implemented starting from July 1, 2026. Zhang Jiutian, Executive Director of the China Green Development Collaborative Innovation Center at Beijing Normal University, pointed out in an interview with reporters from China Energy News that the centralized release of this round of new national standards in a "systematic" manner includes technical routes that have attracted high social attention, such as coal-fired power carbon capture, long-distance pipeline transportation, saline aquifer storage, oil displacement storage, as well as the quantification and testing necessary to ensure project quality and emission reduction effects. This helps fill the gaps in standards, provides necessary basis for CCUS project planning and design, construction and operation, management and evaluation, and promotes the orderly and healthy development of the CCUS industry. This reflects the accelerating formation of China's full-chain standard system for CCUS and the positive trend of domestic standard construction and international collaborative development, which can support the continuous capacity building and foundation consolidation of China's relevant industries.
Standards First
CCUS is about to enter a new "large-scale" stage
In recent years, significant progress has been made in various CCUS technologies in China. The country has basically acquired the capability to design systems for large-scale carbon dioxide capture, transportation, utilization and storage, and has laid the foundation for the realization of large-scale application in the near future. On the whole, it is quite close to the international advanced level and demonstrates Chinese characteristics. The introduction of a series of national standards is a systematic response to the actual needs of China's CCUS industry from technological research and development to practical application.
Zhang Xian, Director of the Climate Change Division at the China 21st Century Agenda Management Center, stated in an interview with a reporter from China Energy News that China's "dual carbon" goals have entered a hard constraint stage featuring accounting, traceability, and verification. In particular, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment has clearly proposed that the CCER market will achieve full coverage in key areas by 2027. In the future, there will be stronger requirements for unified data quality and methods, which have led to the introduction of a series of standards. "The essence of the introduction of these standards is to promote CCUS from 'engineering demonstration' to 'replicable industrial infrastructure'.
Today, CCUS has evolved from a "emission reduction tool" for a single high-emission industry to a cross-industry "carbon cycle hub". According to statistics from the "China Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage Technology Development Roadmap (2025)" and "China Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage Annual Report (2025)" compiled under the leadership of the China 21st Century Agenda Management Center, there are currently more than 120 planned and operational CCUS demonstration projects in China, covering power, oil and gas, chemical industry, cement, steel, etc. Among them, the proportion of operational projects has exceeded half, with a capture capacity of about 9.4 million tons per year and an injection capacity of about 5.9 million tons per year. Full-chain demonstration projects have been implemented, and the capacity for million-ton-level engineering construction and operation is becoming increasingly mature.
The 'risk of inconsistent interfaces' brought about by the cross-industry application expansion of CCUS projects, such as inconsistencies in medium quality, metering methods, and acceptance standards between capture, compression, transportation, and storage at different point sources, all require strict standardization. At the same time, the whole-chain risk management requires 'standards first'. With the large-scale and clustered development of CCUS, the investment in CCUS projects is gradually rising. The country needs stricter and more precise accounting methodologies to impose rigid constraints on them, accurately control the effectiveness of project implementation, and ensure that huge investments are put into practical use and address the pain points," said Zhang Xian.
Full coverage of key links
Further improve the efficiency of industrial collaboration
From important processes such as carbon dioxide capture, transportation, and storage, to basic links like terminology and emission reduction assessment, the 12 national standards released this time cover all key links in the entire CCUS industry chain, and clarify the accounting boundaries, processes, and methods for greenhouse gas emission reductions of CCUS projects.
Zhang Xian believes that in terms of the authenticity of emission reduction, the standards have formed a unified standard chain that is verifiable and traceable, solving the previous problem of vague standards. "For example, the geological storage standard is equivalently adopted from ISO 27914:2017, aligning with internationally accepted rules in key aspects such as terminology, management systems, risk, monitoring and verification. Through a combination of key performance indicator evaluation methods, medium quality thresholds, and MRV requirements for the storage life cycle, emission reductions have shifted from 'enterprise self-reporting' to 'third-party reviewable engineering and data evidence chains.
At the same time, Zhang Jiutian stated that the newly released standards emphasize starting from the application scenarios of technologies, such as the performance evaluation of post-combustion carbon capture for flue gas in thermal power plants and the site selection for offshore saline aquifer storage. These are more in line with enterprises' on-site actual needs and help improve the overall capabilities of the industry.
Once the standards are clarified, the approval process for CCUS projects will also have an opportunity for optimization. "On the premise of not changing the statutory procedures, standardized approval can significantly reduce repeated supplementary submissions and re-reviews caused by inconsistent standards. If the number of rounds of technical review is reduced by 1 to 2, the approval time can be shortened by 30%. At the same time, under the guidance of standards, confirming emission reductions and proving safety according to the same standards can significantly reduce the room for disputes, thereby reducing policy uncertainty," said Zhang Xian.
In addition, Zhang Jiutian stated that the advancement of standardization will also promote the transformation of the approval model from the traditional "case-by-case approval" to "standardized approval" guided by regional planning, so as to further optimize resource allocation and improve industrial collaboration efficiency.
The technology market needs to resonate in the same frequency.
From "whether capture is possible" to "better capture
The interviewees agreed that the new national standards have established basic technical principles and practical frameworks for the accounting of emission reductions, which are of great guiding significance for promoting the standardized development of the industry, but there are still many practical challenges.
Zhang Xian believes that the release of standards can significantly reduce disputes over emission reductions by clarifying accounting methodologies and boundaries. However, to fundamentally solve the problem, it is necessary to form a tight closed loop among unified methodologies, strengthened supervision of data quality, and strengthened third-party responsibilities. "For example, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment has clearly proposed that the voluntary emission reduction system should be 'accountable, traceable, and verifiable' for data, and has clearly put forward full-chain requirements from the verification and calibration of measuring instruments, access of key data to platforms, cross-checking to the consolidation of main responsibilities. Under such a framework of requirements, industry disputes can be better resolved.
In Zhang Jiutian's view, from the perspective of project support, it is necessary to develop methodologies for accounting emission reductions oriented towards the carbon market while developing technical standards, so as to strengthen the synergy between technology and the market.
Currently, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment is actively promoting methodological research and conducting in-depth demonstrations on the inclusion of CCUS projects in the voluntary emission reduction trading mechanism. Standardization drives the technological upgrading of the entire industrial chain and also provides core support for cost optimization in the CCUS industry.
Zhang Xian believes that after the standardization of key performance indicator evaluation methods, corporate competition will shift from "whether capture is possible" to "capturing with lower energy consumption and more stable operation". "Taking a coal-fired power carbon capture project in China as an example, the capture technology targets multi-dimensional indicators such as efficiency, energy consumption, and stability, and has made breakthroughs in capture materials, technical processes, and intelligent control. It has achieved a capture energy consumption of less than 2.4 GJ/t CO₂, reduced absorbent loss to 0.21 kg/t CO₂, and driven the capture cost down to 235 yuan/t CO₂.
Zhang Jiutian suggested that further focus should be placed on studying how to leverage the advantages of economies of scale while accelerating technological innovation in specific fields. "In the short term, developing large-scale and clustered projects relying on carbon dioxide pipelines is expected to reduce the unit cost of CCUS, which serves as a relatively stable driving force. For long-term cost reduction, it is more dependent on the iteration and implementation of technological innovation achievements. Leading enterprises and industrial alliances should be encouraged to build shared technology platforms and demonstration projects based on standards. Through large-scale application and knowledge diffusion, the technical threshold and investment risks for small and medium-sized enterprises can be lowered, thereby forming a sound ecosystem within the industry characterized by 'benchmark leadership and collaborative progress'. This will enable the recommended standards to be transformed into solid support for industrial upgrading in practice.
