China has taken a leading role in utilizing many green technologies and is expected to be a major market for carbon capture and storage technologies, said industry leaders at a CDM Center Capacity Building Program in Beijing.
China, is aiming for many more years of rapid growth fuelled by coal as its main energy source. Scientists are stepping up efforts to limit emissions by capturing and storing them. But experts say the technology for carbon capture and storage (CCS), as the technology for confining emissions is usually known, is costly and parts of it are unproven.
Here are some key questions and answers about CCS in China:
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF CCS? The technology would in theory allow China to continue fuelling growth with coal, while controlling or even cutting the amount of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere. Some carbon-stripping technology could be retro-fitted onto existing power plants, avoiding the need to start rebuilding chunks of the nation’s power infrastructure from scratch.
WHAT ARE THE DRAWBACKS? The technology for capturing carbon dioxide is expensive and energy-intensive, reducing the amount of electricity generated for each tonne of coal and increasing its cost. The technology for storage is still in the early stages.Geologists need to check how easily gas can be injected into a potential store, and whether there are risks of leaks. There is also no consensus yet about issues such as creating stores in earthquake-prone areas, where they could crack open.Some areas suitable for holding large quantities of gas may also be far from the power plants and factories pumping it out.
WHAT ARE THE POSSIBLE METHODS? There are many different options for capturing carbon.China’s first commercial-scale demonstration plant — now under construction — will have pre-combustion capture, where coal is gasified and CO2 stripped out leaving hydrogen as a fuel.Other options could allow CCS at existing coal-fired plants. One is scrubbing the pollutant out of waste gases after coal has been burned, which does not require building new infrastructure, but can be very energy intensive. The oxyfuel method burns coal with oxygen rather than air, producing CO2 and water vapour, making capture easier. Much discussion of CCS has focused on power plants but it could be used in other sectors with high emissions, like steel. China also has nearly 200 chemical plants with high-purity streams of CO2 that could be used for low-cost trials projects.
WHAT PORTION OF CHINA’S EMISSIONS COULD BE CAPTURED? A recent study conducted with the European Union suggested that China could reduce emissions 36 percent from a base scenario for 2050 if it poured resources into carbon control plans including building 400 gigawatts of power plants with CCS. This is a massive amount, equivalent to nearly five times Britain’s current capacity — but amounts to less than half China’s own installed power capacity even now.
WHAT ARE CURRENT STORAGE OPTIONS? One option is oil and gas reservoirs that have been emptied of much of their reserves. Oil firms already use carbon dioxide to help extract more fuel from emptying reservoirs, and the extra crude or gas gained can help offset costs. But in China these can only hold a finite portion of forecast emissions and there are fears some could leak out through the thousands of old wells scattered across many fields. Other options such as saline aquifers deep underground, or coalbeds deemed “unmineable”, offer more storage potential but are still being investigated by scientists.
WHAT HAS CHINA DONE SO FAR? China has a handful of pilot carbon capture and storage projects under development, including one demonstration plant in Beijing, where the gas siphoned off is used to carbonate drinks. Construction has started on the GreenGen power plant that should start power production in 2011 and carbon capture in 2016. China’s biggest coal producer, Shenhua Group, also announced this year that it would install a CCS facility at its coal-to-liquids plant in Ordos, Inner Mongolia. Due to its high cost and unresolved safety issues, it’s unlikely that CCS will be commercialized in China soon.
Storing the carbon dioxide will become as very big challenge as volumes become larger, said CDM Center analysts. The risk exists that the carbon dioxide could leak back into the atmosphere exist, said Liu Shuang, climate and energy project director of Greenpeace China. However, China is very likely to need CCS in the next 20 or 40 years to address climate change, as the scale of the renewable energies would be limited, so China should catch up in the initial period.
Both research institutes and companies have shown great enthusiasm for the technology, but commercialization will take time due to high costs and safety issues, said CDM Center of Excellence Ltd. Market Analysts. “Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a tough issue but there’s an opportunity. If it can make sense in any place, China can take the leadership,” Christoph Frei, secretary-general of World Energy Council. China has outperformed in many aspects of renewable energies and pulled down the price of new energy, particularly in the solar energy sector, Frei said. “China will become a major market for carbon capture,” Philippe Joubert, Alstom Power president, told. The cost of CCS would decline “very quickly” if all countries invested, said Joubert. The French power generation equipment company plans to provide CCS solutions commercially in 2015. A pilot program may be announced in the next two years on a partnership with local Chinese utilities, said Philippe Paelinck, director of carbon dioxide systems business development at Alstom.The components of its future CCS projects in China, such as boilers, will be locally produced in China to cater to local conditions and lower cost, he said. Some State-owned enterprises, such as Shenhua Energy Co and China Huaneng Group, have started CCS pilot projects in cities including Beijing and Shanghai. “Both companies and research institutes are enthusiastically involved in CCS,” said Chen Wenying, a professor at Tsinghua University. All three major CCS technologies, post-combustion capture, oxy-firing and pre-combustion, plus some more advanced technologies, are in their experimental stages at Tsinghua. The demonstration projects mainly use domestically developed technologies. In a future joint demonstration project with the European Union, some technology transfers may be involved, CDM Center of Excellence analysts said. “China is not lagging behind in all core technologies, but compared with international peers, little effort has been made on storage site studies and crisis management. China may levy a carbon tax during the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15), which may encourage coal-fired power plants to adopt new technologies such as CCS to mitigate carbon emissions, CDM Center analysts informed.