Identifying the Market Scenarios for Supercritical CO₂ Power Cycles

The technology management methods and the “technology foresight” allow organizations and stakeholders in a particular market/sector to create an advantage out of technological breakthroughs, sustain and expand technological competitiveness, and identify and evaluate new technological options. Several concepts are used depending mainly on the actual status of an evaluated technology. To identify the status of the supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO₂) power generation technologies, an extensive “technology exploration” task was performed by creating a technology profile through collecting a database. This allowed for creating technological forecasts “scenario approach” for the sCO₂ power cycles. In this article, the sCO₂ power technology is explored, evaluated in relation to current commercial competitive power generation technologies, and forecasted to give an insight into future trends of the novel sCO₂ power cycle in the future market. The outcome is the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data of the sCO₂ technology for short- to long-term forecasts, which could help identify the economic and market value of the sCO₂ power cycle. Three possible market scenarios were identified and combined with a survey distributed among experts to assess different market penetration levels of the sCO₂ technology.