Objective The 15th Five-Year Plan outlines the requirement to actively and steadily advance carbon peaking, fully implement the dual-control system for total carbon emissions and emission intensity, and further promote energy-saving and carbon-reduction retrofits as well as coal-control and coal-reduction initiatives. Coal-fired power serves as the cornerstone of national energy and power security, and is also a major carbon-emission source in China. Carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) is the fallback technology to realize deep decarbonization of coal-fired power while balancing energy supply assurance and emission reduction.

Method This study systematically reviewed the application progress, engineering paradigms and industrialization achievements of CCUS technologies for coal-fired power, and comprehensively analyzed the technical bottlenecks, economic constraints and institutional barriers for its large-scale deployment.

Result China's coal-fired power CCUS technologies have achieved a historic leap from "10000-ton-level demonstration" to "million-ton-level industrial-scale application". Core technologies are gradually maturing, and carbon-capture technologies have reached world-leading levels. The energy consumption of post-combustion capture is reduced to below 2.35 GJ/t CO₂, and the energy consumption of low-pressure adsorption reaches 1.94 GJ/t CO₂. At present, coal-fired power CCUS still encounters multiple bottlenecks including prominent difficulties in large-scale application, poor economic viability, insufficient industrial-chain integration, and imperfect policy and standard systems.

Conclusion To accelerate the transition of coal-fired power CCUS from "engineering demonstration" to "large-scale application", market mechanisms shall act as endogenous driving forces, industrial-chain collaboration as the key path, high-value utilization as an important direction, technological innovation as core support, and fiscal subsidies as leading incentives, so as to build an ecosystem conducive to the large-scale roll-out of coal-fired power CCUS.