Potential for permanent geological storage of CO2 in China: the COACH project

The challenge of climate change demands reduction in global CO₂ mission. Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technology can be used to trap and store carbon dioxide gas emitted by coal-burning plants and this can reduce the world’s total CO₂ emission by about one quarter by 2050 (IEA 2008, 2009; IPCC 2005). Experience from the storage sites of Sleipner in the Norwegian North Sea, Salah in Algeria, Nagaoka in Japan, Frio in USA and other sites shows that geological structures can safely accommodate CO₂ produced and captured from large CO₂ point sources. CCS is regarded as a technology that will make power generation from coal sustainable, based on cost-effective CO₂ capture, transport and safe geological storage of the released CO₂.