Carbon Capture & Sequestration in China: Ripe for the Picking
Posted October 20, 2009 in Greening China, Solving Global Warming
It's the Year of the Ox. And the Ox likes low-hanging fruit. On Friday last week NRDC released the Executive Summary of a report that examines the potential for near-term Carbon Capture & Sequestration opportunities in China. The full report will be released over the coming few weeks.
Why CCS? Why China? My colleague and co-author, Jingjing Qian, covers this and much more in her recent blog. Here, I draw on her and the report's conclusions, and examine the implications.
In short, when life deals you lemons, make lemonade. China is likely the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2), and heavily reliant on fossil fuels. Even under the most aggressive, plausible scenarios of green and energy efficient development, fossil fuels (coal, in particular) still play far too large a role for us to breathe a sigh of relief when it comes to global warming. We need to reduce emissions from fossil fuels, and fast. CCS offers such an option.
Can CCS work in China? The answer seems to be a resounding "yes", for a number of reasons. The price tag for projects will be cheaper in China, due to lower labor, material and fuel costs. There are numerous large point sources where CO2 could be captured, in many cases cheaply (because of their high concentration). China's geology is conducive to sequestering this CO2 geologically, and could accommodate centuries worth of emissions on first examination. Transporting the CO2 from source to sink is far easier than in other parts of the world, since there is very good geographical matching between the two in many cases. The Chinese have made very encouraging moves, both in terms of developing proprietary CCS technology and in terms of pioneering projects within China's boundaries that either incorporate or lend themselves to CCS. China's policy and regulatory framework could be expanded to encompass CCS. Some, or many, of these factors cannot be found in several other parts of the world, making China a special opportunity when it comes to CCS.
Will CCS be taken up spontaneously in China, then? The answer is no. Without international involvement, China by itself is very unlikely to deploy this technology on any significant scale. The first missing component is funding. The second is technological expertise and knowledge transfer. And the third is a domestic policy and regulatory framework. Developed countries and corporations can fill these gaps.
The funding gap is relevant to the Major Economies Forum, to the global climate accord being sought in Copenhagen in December, and to a potential bilateral technology agreement between China and the U.S.. CCS is likely to be part of agreements that come out of all three forums, and has strong potential to pave the way for agreement on a broader climate deal between the two countries.
The technological know-how and expertise gap, (e.g. in areas such as reservoir engineering, CO2 pipeline construction and operation, subsurface modelling and monitoring) can be bridged most productively if Chinese and Western scientists, engineers and practicioners collaborate hands-on in the context of specific pilot projects.
The policy and regulatory gap is one that China will need to address itself, but related experiences from other countries' governments and regulators can prove invaluable. China does things its own way in the end, but its officials certainly look for ideas abroad.
Where to, from here? China's low-hanging fruit CCS opportunities are ripe for the picking. For a modest sum ($100M), the U.S. could help set up quickly 4-5 CCS pilot projects using high purity CO2 streams, spanning five years or so each, that could be pioneering on many fronts: knowledge and technology transfer and building, better geologic characterization of China's key sedimentary basins, and relationship building between the two heavyweights across the Pacific. The Major Economies Forum, and nations in Copenhagen in December, could then cement a deal that includes funding for a certain CCS capacity, arrangements for technology and knowledge transfer, as well as institutional exchange.
Next year is the Year of the Tiger - time for bold action. Lemonade, anyone?
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Comments
Dr. James Singmaster — Oct 21 2009 11:07 AM
NRDC seems to be at a cross roads about "Clean Coal" and dirty coal. Rob Perks has postings here on Oct. 21, 18, 16 & 14; Sept. 28, 2; Aug. 31, 26, 24, 3; July 22 and June 29 about coal's problems with ash and the water from stack scrubbing operations to remove some pollutants. Mr. Perides seems unaware of Mr. Perks postings and of the problem of releasing new energy from trapped sources into the biosphere to add to the energy overload the main cause of global warming really a Climate Crisis due to no one recognizing the role of adding more energy to the overload. If you want to understand the energy overload, check the paper by Dr. E. Chaisson titled "Long-Term Global Heating from Energy Usage" in EOS, Trans. Amer. Geophs. Union, Vol. 89, No. 28, Pgs. 253-4(2008) or a shortened version titled "The Heat to Come" in New Scientist, April 5 or 6 this year. It would seem that CCS will not be removing several major problems with using coal, and so the low fruit is going to be rotten.
On a different but related problem China, being the biggest emitter of soot, could do much more for getting control of the climate crisis by initiating a program to remove soot from the air. Soot may be the major cause of the climate crisis as a brief report in Science, the AAAS journal, Apr. 17 pg. 323, (2009) indicated a study that found 75% of Arctic ice melting was due to soot not GHG induced warming. Dr. J. Singmaster
George Peridas — Oct 21 2009 01:05 PM
Dr. Singmaster,
Thank you for your comment. Rob Perks and I are singing from the same hymn book. We have always cried out against the term "clean coal", precisely because there are numerous environmental ills associated with the mining and use of this fuel: http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/coal/coalclimate.pdf
CCS is about minimizing damage from the CO2 that is emitted from coal that will inevitably get used - not about perpetuating its use. Our urgent climate problem makes this necessary. In the meantime, we will continue campaigning to tackle other associated problems such as (mountaintop removal) mining, coal ash disposal and air quality.
GP
Dr. James Singmaster — Oct 21 2009 06:25 PM
Mr. Perides: CCS will not do anything to stop the energy overloading that will continue until we get to renewable energy. So why waste time supporting "Clean Coal" fraud and CCS? Will it take a CO2 or a toxic capturing chemical escape or a fire-explosion to convince people of the mess that CCS will be developing?
Again the heat energy being released from a trapped source be it fossil fuels or atoms keeps adding to GW. Check out Chaisson's paper. We need to realize that we are losing ground and big money trying to keep those energy sources going.
We need to put all our time and money into many more windmills, which China is supposed to be doing (Science Sept. 11, pg.1378, and into solar collection with panels to generate electricity or with mirrors to heat water to get steam. More important would be getting tested and working one or more of the 10 catalysts claimed in the last 2 1/2 yrs. to split water to get hydrogen with sunlight energy. Hydrogen so generated might be used rather quickly for power generation at night when solar electriciity generation will be nil.
I have outlined on Ms. Greenwood's recent posting concerning wastes about using pyrolysis on the massive ever-expanding messes of organic wastes and sewage solids indicating a number of benefits that can accur. I urge you to get NRDC to look into how those messes can become a resource to get some carbon and energy removed from their biosphere overloads. We go nowhere in getting control of the energy and environmental crises until we start doing such removal so we should dump the CCS thinking to put time and money to better use.
Dr. J. Singmaster
Cliff Gladstein — Oct 22 2009 09:05 AM
Dr. Singmaster,
It makes no sense to pursue a strategy of "putting all our time and money into many more windmills." Time and money need to be invested in all of the worthy strategies to reduce fossil fuel use and increase the role that renewable resources play in our energy economy. But in the real world of operating utilities and providing power to consumers, consumers who expect that the lights will go on when they flip the switch, renewables have to be firmed with power from sources that are not intermittent. Having worked on developing wind properties, I can tell you that the best wind farms produce power 40% - 45% of the time. Good solar generates power 85% of the time. Even concentrated solar (the mirrors that you spoke of) has to be firmed with natural gas. Unfortunately, people expect their lights to go on 100% of the time, not 45 - 85% of the time. Renewables are an essential element in the strategy to wean ourselves off of fossil fuel-derived power, and must be urgently developed and deployed with rigor and dispatch, but until technology is developed and commercialized that can economically and sustainably store the unfathomably vast volumes of electricity that will be necessary to obtain all power from renewables, humanity will continue to rely on power plants to ensure that our lights go on 100% of the time.
Lets not forget the time frame in which we need to reduce concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere - 40 years. Humanity can't afford to wait until the hydrogen splitting catalysts that you speak of are developed, perfected and commercialized. The emission reductions we need are needed now. It will take generations to replace the existing power generation infrastructure with any possible alternative. The advent of a hydrogen energy economy is many decades away, and is fraught with many technological, environmental, economic and political barriers. Believe me - I have been working to accelerate the development of hydrogen power generation and alternative transportation technologies for nearly two decades. We simply don't have the time to wait for pie-in-the-sky technologies that may-or-may-not work or which we may-or-may-not be able to afford.
That is one of the reasons why CCS is such a crucial bridge technology. It enables coal-dependent power providers to dramatically lower the carbon-footprint of their base-load generation in the near and medium term while renewables are deployed rationally and sustainably and other crucial cost-effective energy technologies are developed. CCS is one tool in a multi-faceted arsenal against climate change that is needed to produce near term carbon emission reductions that we so desperately need. Mr. Peridas and NRDC are clearly taking this in to account in developing their position CCS and the role it can play in helping to address this critical environmental challenge.