A linear scaling local correlation approach is proposed for approximately solving the coupled cluster doubles (CCD) equations of large systems in a basis of orthogonal localized molecular orbitals (LMOs). By restricting double excitations from spatially close occupied LMOs into their associated virtual LMOs, the number of significant excitation amplitudes scales only linearly with molecular size in large molecules. Significant amplitudes are obtained to a very good approximation by solving the CCD equations of various subsystems, each of which is made up of a cluster associated with the orbital indices of a subset of significant amplitudes and the local environmental domain of the cluster. The combined effect of these two approximations leads to a linear scaling algorithm for large systems. By using typical thresholds, which are designed to target an energy accuracy, our numerical calculations for a wide range of molecules using the 6-31G or 6-31G* basis set demonstrate that the present local correlation approach recovers more than 98.5% of the conventional CCD correlation energy.