•CCS technology lock-in risk of coal-fired power plants in China was considered.•The cost of CCS commercialization in different scenarios was evaluated.•CCS retrofit potential of coal-fired power plants in China was explored.•Suggestions on CCS promotion and avoiding CCS technology lock-in were put forward. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been discussed intensively in China; however, the CCS technology lock-in risk has been neglected for a long time and may have a negative impact on understanding the CCS application potential. Thus, from the perspective of avoiding a technology lock-in, a learning curve model and a cost-optimization model are employed in this study to explore the total cost of CCS commercialization and the national and provincial CCS retrofit potential of coal-fired power plants in China. The results show that if the second-generation CCS technologies are not commercially applied by 2040, coal-fired power plants in China may face a huge risk of being locked in by the first-generation technologies with a retrofit potential of only 0–143.63 GW (GW = 106 kW) and a cost of 13.39 billion USD. Advancing the CCS commercialization time to 2030 can reduce the technology lock-in risk greatly and increase the CCS retrofit potential to 431.01–499.90 GW, which would cost 54.3 billion USD. Considering the cost input, the technology lock-in risk, and the CCS retrofit demand, 2035 is regarded a suitable time for CCS commercialization in China with a retrofit potential of 143.63–431.04 GW and 31.46 billion USD cost input. Moreover, at the regional level, there is a great CCS retrofit potential of coal-fired power plants in Shaanxi, Hebei, and Inner Mongolia. Policymakers should provide greater support for the second-generation CCS technologies and promote them actively in 2030–2035, especially in Shaanxi, Hebei, and Inner Mongolia, to achieve CCS commercialization and control the CO2 emissions of coal-fired power plants in China.