Shenhua Plans China's First Carbon Capture Project

飞雪寒冰

Shenhua Group, China's top coal producer, is developing a carbon capture and storage (CCS) system for its coal-to-liquids plant, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission said in a statement.

If implemented, the CCS project would be the first in China, capturing and storing the emissions of Shenhua's coal-to-liquids plant in Ordos, in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region. The plant, with an annual capacity of 1 million tons, started trial operations at the end of 2008.



China, which became the world’s leading emitter of carbon dioxide in 2008, is studying ways to mitigate its heavy dependence on coal for energy. Carbon capture is one such method, but the economics of the process remain poor because of the additional cost of transporting carbon emissions to a suitable underground storage site instead of releasing it into the air. Power plants are also most efficient when they are near end-users – but those users may also be far away from the best areas for storage.



Inner Mongolia was likely chosen as a test site because of the many mature gas fields in the region.



Shenhua's CCS project is expected to enter full operations over the next 12 to 24 months.