Like Canada and the United States, China also is working on its first commercial-scale power plant, a $US 1 billion undertaking called GreenGen, to use carbon capture and storage, in the northern city of Tianjin.
The project is being funded by a group of investors consisting of US coal giant Peabody Energy, five of China’s largest power companies, two domestic coal companies and government entity State Development and Investment Corp, which operates the country’s state-owned assets.
All components for the plant are being manufactured domestically, with the exception of a gas turbine power unit. The facility’s core feature is a gasifier designed by the Thermal Power Research Institute in Xi’an, a subsidiary of one of GreenGen’s utility stakeholders, China Huaneng Group.
The first phase of the project is expected to be completed by 2011 at a cost of about $290m. It will be capable of generating 250MW of electricity and gasifying 2,000 tonnes of coal daily.