CHINA'S HUANENG POWER LAUNCHES PILOT CARBON CAPTURE PLANT IN BEIJING

August 5, 2008
Xinhua Financial News

BEIJING (XFN-ASIA) - China's Huaneng Power has completed the country's first pilot carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in Beijing, according to the project's joint venture partner in Australia. Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) said the project - built at the Huaneng Beijing Co-Generation Power Plant - will capture 3,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year. The facility employs "post-combustion" carbon capture technologies, using a liquid to capture CO2 from the flue gases produced by the power station. The project was aimed at assessing the viability of the new technology in China, CSIR's David Brockway said.

He said that they would now try to scale up the facility. The Chinese government has identified carbon capture and storage as one of the key technologies in the efforts to reduce the country's greenhouse emissions. The United Nations is also considering including CCS in the list of technologies eligible for support through the clean development mechanism (CDM), and it formed a large part of the international climate change discussions in Bali late last year, but the technology remains controversial.

Josh Harris, carbon finance program manager with the London-based Climate Group, said at a recent conference that "the biggest problem with CCS at the moment is cost, and the projects are not currently viable." There are also concerns about the safety and integrity of the sites used to bury sequestrated carbon dioxide. david.stanway@xinhuafinance.com

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