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China Energy Investment Corporation, a state-owned electricity generator, has started up a carbon capture project at one of its thermal coal power plants which will be the biggest such carbon capture facility in Asia.
The carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) facility at the Taizhou thermal coal power plant will have an annual capacity to store 500,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), a report in state media outlet CCTV said on Friday.
China is looking to increase the use of CCUS in its enormous fleet of coal-fired power plants, which continues to grow as power demand increases.
This year, concerns about power shortages could force China to rely more on coal to keep grids stable amid the growing demand for electricity, including from the rising electric vehicles (EV) fleet, analysts at ANZ Group said earlier this year.
“Power shortages are likely to reemerge as the acceleration in the energy transition continues to put pressure on electricity networks,” the analysts added.
Currently, China is building or planning to build some 366 gigawatts (GW) in new coal generation capacity, accounting for some 68% of global planned new coal capacity as of 2022. Outside China, coal generation capacity is shrinking, with 2.2 GW getting retired in Europe last year and 13.5 GW of capacity retired in the United States—the highest rate of coal power plant retirement globally.
Carbon capture and storage is one of the ways for China to mitigate emissions from coal as the world’s top energy consumer has said it would aim to see its emissions peak by 2030.
Elsewhere, CCUS is gaining momentum in the UK and the United States with major government support over the past year as part of the solutions to cut greenhouse gas emissions and put the world on track to reach the Paris Agreement targets.
