Policy Overview
In 2024, China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) significantly refined its regulatory oversight for CCUS projects. Building upon the 2016 trial guidelines and integrated with the 2024 China CCUS Annual Report, this updated guidance establishes the ‘environmental redlines’ for the entire value chain. A key feature is the mandate for ‘Synergistic Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)’, which requires projects to evaluate conventional pollutants and carbon emissions concurrently.
The 2024 update provides detailed risk identification metrics for CO2 capture, liquefaction, transport, and sequestration. It specifically targets potential risks such as groundwater contamination, land subsidence, and induced seismicity, setting mandatory early-warning thresholds. This policy marks a transition in China’s CCUS governance from pure technological encouragement to a dual-constraint model emphasizing safety, compliance, and multi-pollutant reduction. By implementing graded risk management, the guidance provides the institutional framework necessary for CCUS to scale from isolated engineering demos to standardized national infrastructure.