原文链接：http://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ccs-early-bird-antonios-papaspiropoulos/

日期：2018.05.04

This week, I am dialing in from the world’s most populous city, Shanghai. 

Home to more than 24 million people, the world’s biggest metro system (364 stations), and the world’s fastest bullet train (the 431 kph Shanghai Maglev or “magnetic levitation train”), we chose Shanghai as the host city for our fifth annual Asia Pacific CCS Forum because it symbolizes speed, success – and CCS.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is now part of the climate change lexicon in China and it has been embraced at the highest levels of national, provincial and municipal leadership.

Testament to the technology’s importance in China, this year’s opening address at our Forum is being given by Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Climate Change Deputy Director General, Sun Zheng. Mr Sun is a leader who is profoundly aware that energy is key to China’s economic growth but that it comes with immense climate responsibility.

This has particular resonance in Shanghai which is experiencing rainfall on a scale never before experienced, with more than 100 millimeters often recorded within a single hour. This has prompted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to identify Shanghai as a city vulnerable to coastal flooding by the 2070s.

This takes on even more poignancy when you consider that Shanghai is home to industry, particularly the massive steel, cement, fertilizer and petrochemical sectors which contribute to China’s three billion tonnes of industrial CO2 emissions each year.

As a result, China has moved seven large-scale CCS facilities into various stages of planning and progress over the past 18 months.

Additionally, eight different provinces have also committed to CCS as part of their five-year plans – the economic development guidelines which set each region’s overall direction.

So the technology is known, and news of its prowess is spreading fast.

In Shanghai, a city that records the biggest number of patents filed globally each year (more than one million), CCS needs little intellectual introduction.

The technology has been around for almost half a century (Shell christened the first CCS facility, Val Verde, in Texas in 1972) and it is proven to be safe, versatile and commercially successful. The process known as carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) whereby CO2 is re-injected into previously developed oil fields to recover more oil, is now well established. It is an environmental and economic win/win.

At this coming week’s Forum, the International Energy Agency (IEA) will reinforce the fact that CCS is also the only clean technology able to decarbonise the massive industrial sector, alone representing more than 20 per cent of global CO2 emissions.

When you consider that China has more than 1500 billion tonnes of meticulously mapped underground storage capacity at its disposal (read; porous rock able to safely and permanently store CO2), the technology starts to speak for itself. Remember, China emits three billion tonnes of industrial CO2 so theoretically, there is more than enough room underground to dispose of it.

China’s progressiveness is also evidenced in the value it has placed on avoided carbon. Last year, China’s carbon cap-and-trade system went national with all 24 provinces signing on to a national carbon trading scheme where emitters can buy and sell emission credits. We have been ardent proponents of the need to reward CO2 mitigation and put predictable, enduring market mechanisms in place. This is the perfect example of the kind of incentivization needed.

With this background, it is little surprise that, come Wednesday, our event will be bursting at the seams with more than 200 government officials, industry leaders, academics, economists, entrepreneurs, climate change experts and journalists from across China and around the world. On Thursday, we will taking delegates to Bao Steel, the world's second biggest steel plant's, new CCS facility.

 There is an old Chinese proverb that says a bird that flies first will get to the forest earlier.

China knows that early adopters achieve quick success. Early adopters also engender fast followers.

 Roll on Wednesday and the CCS early-birds who are coming.

 (Incidentally, there are no early-bird registrations).

 Everyone is here already.