California Construction Trucking Association (CCTA)

Many environmentalists suggest that China will be the country that makes carbon capture and sequestration viable — but Chinese officials remain unconvinced.

Shai Oster – Wall Street Journal – July 26, 2010

With its vast manufacturing base and heavy reliance on coal for electricity, China, already the world’s top emitter of global warming gases, is beginning to dominate some clean-tech sectors, including solar and wind power. Environmentalists, and the U.S. government, think it can replicate that success with storing carbon.

Some of China’s biggest state-owned companies are actively trying to develop carbon-sequestration technology. Its leading power company, state-owned China Huaneng Group, is leading a consortium in building GreenGen, an advanced power plant that it plans to fit with machinery to siphon off carbon emissions.

The technology that strips out the primary global warming gas for storage underground, however, is extremely costly and consumes energy. Just this week, Peng Sizheng, an official from the Ministry of Science, was quoted by Chinese media saying that carbon capture shouldn’t be promoted in China because it’s too expensive.

His skepticism echoes earlier comments by energy czar Zhang Guobao. Carbon capture and sequestration “does not work as well as planting more trees or reducing desertification,” he told a conference last summer.

The high cost of storing carbon is affecting other initiatives to turn coal into oil. Chinese officials who used to back the process as a way reduce reliance on oil imports have now sharply cut support, and are allowing only a handful of coal-to-liquids projects, such as one proposed by South Africa’s Sasol Ltd., to proceed.