Ming Sung, chief representative in Asia for the Clean Air Task Force, a Boston-based nonprofit group dedicated to reducing atmospheric pollution, said that other companies in China confront the same obstacle.
"Lacking economic incentive is the biggest hurdle for the development of carbon capture, utilization and storage technology," Sung said. "Companies don't do things that they cannot make money from."
It is unclear whether the upcoming Chinese carbon trading market, starting from next year, will allow companies to trade emission credits generated from CCUS projects. And the amount they can sell to the soft drinks industry is tiny compared with the supply of CO2.
There are also talks of supplying captured CO2 to oil companies, which can inject the gas into wells and use it to extract more oil. While this practice has been widely deployed in North America, its development in China may take time, as Chinese CO2 suppliers and oil companies have to go through hard negotiations before working together, Sung said.
Health, soil and water
Then there are environmental concerns. In a report issued in 2009, Greenpeace International called carbon capture and storage technology a "false hope" to save the climate, saying that "safe and permanent storage of CO2 cannot be guaranteed."
Greenpeace argued that while it is not currently possible to quantify the exact risks, any CO2 leakage from underground has the potential to affect the surrounding environment, raising the dangers of polluted soil and water, and even suffocation.
Shenhua monitors its storage site here, which lies below a field covered by blooming yellow flowers, with instruments in an attempt to trace any changes caused by stored CO2.
Workers check the data every two hours to analyze how carbon dioxide is moving underground and whether there are any leaks. The company also collects samples of soil and groundwater.
While acknowledging risks in carbon capture and storage technology, Shenhua engineers view their project as more of a helper, saying that it can help collect data and assist drafting rules in this unregulated sector.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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Add CommentAnother Big Oil infomercial dutifully copied down by Big Oil's stenographers here at Sciam.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"...although the nation in recent years has been pushing hard to use other energy means, installing more wind and hydro power than elsewhere.. "
Note as always Sciam's policy paid for Big Oil is to mention nuclear only when FUKU can be brought into it. China is installing miniscule amounts of wind capacity (none of which can replace coal) while instituting massive nuclear and hydro builds.
Carbon Capture is a worthless never never land sop for the stupid where Big Oil tries to defer the only possible action on pollution and climate change - nuclear power - while pretending it has a real solution which just needs more government investment.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/09/23/carbon-capture-study.html
The morons/crooks in the Obama admin have spent two orders of magnitude more on carbon capture than they have on the real already developed ready to build Gen IV nuclear like the GE Prism (IFR) or the MSR (thorium) reactors.
Carbon capture and storage is uneconomical without a carbon tax on CO2 emissions. With carbon tax, solar, wind and biomass are clearly viable. With no carbon tax CO2 pollution will irreperably change the climate and destroy biodiversity and wreck our economy. The deniers seem to think that mankind is immortal, as very few of them seem to accept the hard facts of scientific data.
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