Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
8/28/2015
BILLINGS, Mont. —The U.S. and China this week initiated a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signifying the countries’ intent to continued collaboration on development of clean coal technology. Assistant Energy Secretary for Fossil Energy Christopher Smith and Vice Administrator Shi Yubo of China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) initialed the MOU, which is expected to be formally signed next month.
It is important for the U.S. and China to work together in this area, Smith said at the U.S.-China Clean Coal Industry Forum held here this week. The countries are the world’s top two producers of carbon and both rely heavily on coal for electricity generation. “As the world’s leading economies, it’s critical for the United States and China to collaborate the open exchange of ideas, lessons learned, and expertise. Such collaboration underscores the strong relations that we have forged,” Smith said.
The new MOU will commit the countries to sharing knowledge of nonproprietary information related to clean coal and CCUS. “At the end of the day, U.S. and China, both at the government and the industry levels, have made lots of progress as energy partners in general and in clean coal in particular and our joint efforts in promoting CCUS and other clean energy technologies will benefit not only just our two countries, but the global economy as well,” Smith said.
The MOU is the latest in a series of U.S.-Chinese cooperative engagements regarding climate change over the past several months.
In November U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a climate agreement, under which the United states committed to reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025 and China committed to setting targets to peak CO2 emissions by 2030 and increase non-fossil fuel energy production to 20 percent of the energy mix by 2030. To do this, the countries said they would ramp up work to advance clean coal innovations, among other steps.
The November announcement included plans for a joint carbon capture, utilization, and storage project in China. The new project will explore enhanced water recovery, a process by which CO2 is used to extract brine water from aquifers. That water can then be purified. “For water-constrained countries like China and portions of the United States as well, this technology can very well be a game changer,” Smith said.
