System decarbonisation has been a focus in the development of energy systems in the 21st
century and the decarbonisation of electricity systems is understood to be critical to enabling
the whole system decarbonisation. Accordingly, the future electricity system is anticipated
to exhibit distinct characteristics compared to the current system. However, preoccupation
with images of the 20st century system persists, leading to a disparity between the climate
mitigation goals, policy decisions, future system requirements, technology innovations focus,
and market mechanisms. This thesis attempted to address this challenge by investigating
the role and value of power generation technology, particularly CCS-equipped power plants,
in delivering net-zero emissions targets under different policy and market paradigms in systems
with different characteristics. Here, we show that policy mechanisms and technology
innovations that overlook the systems’ integration cannot decarbonise the systems while potentially
inflating the cost. Despite the necessity to minimise the system’s residual emissions,
the carbon tax needs to be paired with CO2 removal (CDR) credit to deep decarbonise the
system. These mechanisms can accelerate variable renewable energy (VRE) deployment that
is benefited the most from further technology cost reduction. Although CCS continues to be
seen as a pre-commercial technology, we found that the incumbent technology is already cost-effective
to provide substantial value to the systems and that further cost reduction of CCS
will not considerably reduce system cost. Thus, public spending should focus on efforts to
enable the commercial deployment of CCS, such as CO2 transport and storage infrastructure
deployment. Moreover, the implementation of CDR trading to complement existing wholesale
electricity, capacity, and emissions markets can considerably reduce electricity prices. While
these system-level findings appear to be relevant in all cases, we found that system characteristics
strongly affect directions for future technology improvements in the technology level.
Interestingly, in systems with rapidly growing demand, accelerating the deployment of low
carbon dispatchable technology is more appreciated than technology improvements.