Environmental Performance Assessment of Power Plants with CCS by Arjan van Horssen and Joris Koornneef

Life cycle inventory, analysis, and valuation of the environmental performance of Carbon Capture and Storage chains are important inputs for development, implementation, and policy evaluation of technologies in order to minimize environmental trade-offs to other industries or countries.

This study assesses the environmental performance of power plants with CCS over their complete life cycle in a transparent way by using the environmental performance tool, developed within WP4.3. The user can build one or multiple chains simultaneously to allow direct comparison. The tool uses a well-accepted methodology (ReCiPe) by default for calculating the environmental impacts. Monetization of the impacts is possible to express the environmental costs across the life cycle. Such analyses may show under what conditions the benefits of CCS outweigh the trade-offs, from different stakeholder perspectives