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Beijing's new traffic rules -- how effective in the long run?

2010-12-30T06:10:13Z

JingJing Qian, China Country Director, Beijing

Beijing, a city with a population of 19 million, suffers from increasingly frequent and widespread traffic gridlocks and the air pollution from car exhaust. I previously blogged about a paralyzing traffic jam incident in Beijing in August and discussed possible solutions. Last week, the New York Times had an article on Beijing’s traffic that mentions a survey by I.B.M. of 20 global metropolises, which rated Beijing’s traffic as tied for the world’s worst, along with Mexico City.

Registered motor vehicles in Beijing reached 4.71 million by December 5th, according to the Beijing Bureau of Public Security and Traffic Control. This year alone, the city has added almost 800,000 new cars, more than 2000 per day on average. To visualize how astonishing the number is, Chinese newspaper The First Financial Daily estimates that Beijing’s 2nd, 3rd, and 4th ring roads have a combined area capable of “parking” 223,900 cars, which is only 5% of Beijing’s total registered vehicles! In other words, if merely 6 out of every 100 Beijing cars go on the streets, the city’s artery road system will already be totally choked.

In response to this dire situation, the Beijing municipal government released a comprehensive five-year action plan last Thursday, following a week-long public comment period on a draft version (find the original Chinese document here). The action plan rightly places a big emphasis on expanding and improving the city’s public transportation system and encouraging bicycle use. Specifically, the plan seeks to improve public transportation by:

Adding 354 new subway trains, upgrading 114 existing trains, and installing air conditioning in 186 old trains;
Decreasing the interval between subway trains from 3 minutes to 2 minutes;
Establishing150 km new Bus Rapid Transit lines and bus special lanes;
Building 9 new public transportation hubs;
Putting in use 2,100 “new energy” buses, e.g., CNG (compressed natural gas) and electric buses; and
Constructing 1,000 bicycle rental spots with a total capacity of 50,000 bikes near public transportation stations;

In addition to boosting public transportation, the plan also adopts some measures to curb car sales and car use:

Limiting new car licenses to 240,000 in 2011 through a no-charge lottery;
Restricting vehicles from other cities from running within the 5th ring road during workdays;
Putting in place a moratorium on new vehicle purchases by Beijing government agencies and Beijing government-funded institutions for the next five years; and
Adopting a 3-zone parking fee system with the busiest central area having the highest rate (equivalent to $1.50/hour).

Other planned activities to ease congestion include:

Building 5 more citywide expressways with a total distance of 37.3 km and a number of express tunnels;
Completing 200 km of new roads in the downtown area;
Improving “micro-circulation” of 400 km of existing street networks; and
Building 30,000 more parking space along transit lines (But the plan also includes the construction of 200,000 more parking spots in residential areas and near public buildings, which we think will induce car use.)

All of the above measures should help ease the congestion, but I wonder for how long?

Cutting new vehicle registration by 2/3 next year is certainly impressive. Still, 240,000 new cars will hit Beijing’s already crowded streets in one year’s time. It seems the majority of Beijingers want cars. Car sales in Beijing in December rose to a record high, after residents heard about the municipal government’s plan to control new car registrations next year. Why is that? Is it just because people want to possess cars for status? Why has bicycling in Beijing – actually in all Chinese cities – kept declining? The Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport said on its website in August that only 18.1 percent of commuting was now done by bike, compared to 30.3 percent in 2005. The percentage for car use, on the other hand, rose from 29.8 to 34.2 over the same period.

I believe most people buy cars out of necessity. Beijing has become too huge to get anywhere by bike, not to mention by foot. Moreover, its streets are no longer so easy for walking and bicycling, because motor vehicle lanes get the priority. While Beijing’s subway system is increasingly extensive and trains run frequently, it is crowded almost all the time.

Photo: Packed subway cars at Beijing’s Jianguomen Station on Dec. 21, 2010 -- by Xinhua News reporter Li Wen

The root cause of Beijing’s transportation challenge is bad urban planning. Beijing is too big, making bicycling unrealistic for going to many places; and it is mono-centered, causing “tidal commuting” that requires high investments in the infrastructure in order to cope with peak transportation demands.

As the Google map below shows, Beijing now has 6 layers of highway ring roads. I estimate that the total area within the 6th ring is approximately 800 square miles. For comparison, New York City (all five boroughs) has 300 square miles. From the map we can see that right now most of the area within the 5th ring, which is about the size of NYC, has been urbanized. Many experts have already pointed out the problem of Beijing’s “pancake” like layout. Since 2004, the Beijing government was reported to have begun creating sub-centers around Beijing in a bid to correct the single-centered layout. These sub-centers, e.g. Yizhuang, Tongzhou, Shunyi, and Changping, can be seen on the Google map as starting to take shape.

Beijing City Map -- from Google

However, it’s not clear how strong these sub-centers can attract the businesses that otherwise will seek to locate in Beijing’s central area. Will these localities fall or have they already fallen pray to massive housing development? Beijing needs self-sustained smaller cities nearby, instead of more “sleeping towns” like Huilongguan and Tiantongyuan, where there are few job opportunities.

Unless the municipal and lower-level governments can really master their political will to crack down on irregularities and corruption related to land development that defy a city’s land use plan and growth boundaries, I am doubtful that Beijing’s “pancake” layout will stop at the 5th ring road.

A good urban plan should be based on Smart Growth principles, which emphasize compactness, walkable communities, mixed land use, and transit-oriented development (TOD) that preserves green buffer zones alongside development strips to prevent urban sprawl and serve as development boundaries. But even if a plan is good, land development corruption or weak implementation can lead to developers ignoring the plan and building wherever huge profits can be made.

Actually, ten years ago Beijing had already formulated a “Master Plan on Greenbelts” aimed at building sufficiently wide circular greenbelts along the ring roads to curb the city’s outward growth. But implementation has not been satisfactory: “the encroachment of greenbelt areas has been grave”.

Beijing's flawed urban layout will make solving its traffic congestion untenable in the short term. But at least the action plan released by Beijing last week is a stronger positive sign than before that shows the Beijing government’s determination to adopt bolder measures to pursue sustainable urban development. We hope Beijing’s multiple actions and its heavy investments in the expansion of public transportation will bring noticeable improvement in several years. In the long run, however, smarter urban planning remains the only sustainable solution. We hope the numerous medium-sized cities in China that are also growing rapidly will take heed of Beijing’s lessons.

With contributions from Kevin Hsu and Alvin Lin.

Taking the Carbon Out of Coal: An Update on China's GreenGen Project

2010-10-20T10:09:20Z

JingJing Qian, China Country Director, Beijing

Last week in Tianjin, NRDC’s team got a first-hand look at China’s ambitious investments in advanced coal technology. The GreenGen project, located in Tianjin’s Binhai New Area, will be China’s first commercial-scale integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plant. And when all three phases are completed, GreenGen will be one of the world’s largest commercial-scale demonstrations of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. This is yet another reminder that China is not waiting for others to pioneer low-carbon technologies but is moving rapidly to develop many of them with its own resources.

When the first phase of the 250MW IGCC facility is completed at the end of next year, small-scale CCS will be performed in a testing facility. A major milestone in this phase was reached not long after our visit: the primary gasifier for extracting synthetic gas (syngas) from coal was successfully installed. In the second phase, GreenGen plans to build a commercial-scale CCS system connected with its next IGCC phase at 450 MW. The facility will be a convenient platform on which to experiment and develop new, more efficient technologies including polygeneration, hydrogen gas turbines, and fuel cells. The final phase will reach max capacity at 650MW.

This $1 billion project is a joint effort of seven Chinese state-owned companies led by China Huaneng (China’s largest electric utility). U.S. coal magnate Peabody Energy has a 6% share in the project. Therefore, GreenGen is basically receiving the full backing of the Chinese government. In addition, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology is providing some funding for R&D and the Asian Development Bank has offered a large grant.

Except for the gas turbine to be supplied by Siemens, all the components are sourced domestically, including the crucial gasifier technology which was developed by Huaneng’s Thermal Power Research Institute (TPRI). In addition to tapping the domestic market, TPRI is also expanding overseas. It is licensing its technology to U.S.-based Future Fuels for use in a 270MW IGCC/CCS plant in Good Springs, PA.

A short 40-minute drive from Tianjin’s city center, the project is strategically located near the Dagang oil fields, allowing for sequestering carbon emissions in under-performing or depleted oil wells in order to improve the output of the wells. Known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR), this method of carbon sequestration provides near-term, economical CCS opportunities in China.

The construction site was impressive. GreenGen received approval from China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) to begin design in May 2008, with construction beginning in May 2009, and it is already half-way done with its first phase. We visited the site in mid-day and saw some 2,000 workers and engineers busy working. In fact, workers are on site around the clock, sharing three eight-hour shifts a day.

Jiang Kejun, director of research for NDRC’s Energy Research Institute, said at a convening of coal experts on the sidelines of the Tianjin climate change conference that China plans to build 20 more such gasification and CCS power plants if GreenGen is successful.

While we always emphasize energy efficiency and renewable energy sources as the first priorities in addressing rising GHG emissions, we also recognize China’s continued dependence on coal as a fact. NRDC’s China Program has been promoting energy efficiency policies and tools for China’s power sector and is assessing ways to expand China’s renewable energy resources. We applaud China’s determination to phase out small, inefficient coal plants and gear up for a low-carbon future (see our most recent China factsheet).

Huaneng already operates two post-combustion carbon capture facilities – Shidongkou in Shanghai and Gaobeidian in Beijing – but the GreenGen project will use pre-combustion carbon capture, where carbon dioxide is captured from the syngas stream coming out of the gasifier. Syngas has higher concentrations of CO2 compared to flue gas from a regular coal-fired power plant, thereby reducing capture costs.

Advanced coal technologies and CCS are a critical investment for China as it seeks to reduce its carbon intensity by 40-45% by 2020. What we saw on the ground is a promising sign that China is seriously tackling the twin challenges of meeting the energy needs of its fast-growing economy while still addressing dangerous global warming pollution.

We look forward to hearing further progress from China on its efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

This post was co-written with Michael Davidson and Adam Scherr.

Out of a Jam: China Can Choose Sustainable Transportation and Smart Growth Instead of Car Dependence and Hypermotorization

2010-09-27T17:18:07Z

JingJing Qian, China Country Director, Beijing

China still has a chance to jump over the trap of car dependence and innovate new ways of sustainable living—if it chooses.

For over ten days in late August, a traffic jam in the northwest corner of Beijing stretched sixty miles toward Inner Mongolia. With engines continuously burning fuel, vehicles inched forward, sometimes progressing as little as 1/3 of a mile a day, while sending plumes of exhaust spiraling skyward. At one point, officials suggested that the bottleneck might not be cleared until September. While this particular incident was triggered by road construction, similarly nightmarish experiences are not unfamiliar to Beijing residents, who deal with long, frustrating commutes through the capital’s sclerotic roads on a daily basis. The most recent record-breaking incident in Beijing was on September 17th before the Moon Festival holiday. A light rain triggered a severe evening rush-hour jam that extended to 140 roads, reducing driving speeds on those roads below 12.4 miles/hour. Of course, we all know the small rain was not the real culprit.

Traffic congestion has become increasingly frequent and severe in major Chinese cities as car sales have boomed. In 2009, China overtook the United States to become the world’s largest market for personal vehicles, with sales of 13 million cars and light trucks. This year’s sales are projected to surpass 15 million units. In Beijing alone, this translates to approximately adding 1,900 new cars every day.

The potential impact of this surging tide of automobiles—on air quality, human health, personal mobility and quality of life—is tremendous. Road networks in mega cities like Beijing and Shanghai (and in many second-tier cities such as Xi’an and Dalian) have expanded several folds over the past three decades, but still continuously suffer from severe congestions and lack of parking. “Induced traffic” is the term transportation experts use -- wider roads lead to more cars and more cars demand wider roads. This is a vicious circle that Chinese cities should try and get out of. Traffic accidents, fatalities and air pollution will keep rising as vehicles and their kilometers traveled increase, even if individual vehicles become safer or more efficient. Dependence on foreign oil and greenhouse gas emissions will also increase, limiting China’s future development potential.

As more cars appear on city streets, more and more pedestrians and cyclists will be crowded out. Between 1995 and 2005, while car ownership rose from 1.14 million to 13.84 million, bicycle ownership dropped 35%. Presently, bicycle usage contributes only 18.1% of people’s trips in Beijing.

The number of cars per capita remains low—there are only 18 cars for every 1,000 people in China, compared to 940 for every 1,000 in the United States—so the room for growth is huge and the speed at which automobile use is expanding is alarming. Since 2009, China has become the world’s number one auto maker and seller, with two-digit rates of annual increase. Transportation expert Lee Schipper calls this “hypermotorization” which is leading to frequent gridlock, intense pollution, and hideous streets for walking and cycling.

But this situation isn’t inevitable in the course of urbanization. As Schipper has noted, in China “most of the infrastructure and almost all of the vehicles that could be seen on the streets by 2020 are not yet in place or manufactured.” That means China still has a choice. After all, since most people don’t own cars yet and haven’t begun to drive, their habits and preferences can still be shaped in an environmentally sustainable way.

Thus, it is absolutely critical for Chinese policy makers and planners to put “sustainable transportation” on the top of their agendas, in order to avoid the trap of car/oil dependence.

First, sustainable transportation entails affordable, convenient, and green mass transportation. Luckily, there is good news on this front: China is constructing high-speed railways (HSR). Currently, the length of operating HSR in China has reached 4,288 miles, placing the country first in the world in terms of commercial mileage. Meanwhile, more than 6,200 miles more HSR are under construction, and the railways with the world's fastest operating speed of 350 km/hr (217.5 miles/hour) have begun operations between Beijing and Tianjin, Wuhan and Guangzhou, Zhengzhou and Xi'an, and Shanghai and Nanjing. In addition to inter-city mass transit, at least 15 cities already have subway systems operating or under construction.

However, not every city is as big as Shanghai or Beijing, so subways are not necessarily cost effective. Nor can every part of a city be reached by a subway train. Therefore, sustainable transportation also means offering a range of clean and efficient choices, including safe and enjoyable walking and cycling. Other mass transit options such as bus rapid transit or simply more frequent and convenient regular bus routes, which can be built at a fraction of subway costs, may be suitable for many smaller cities. (See here for more information on BRT in China)

In addition, strategies such as limiting the issuance of license plates, levying fuel taxes, and establishing congestion charges could also help discourage the use of cars; though finding ways of reducing the crowdedness and increasing comfortableness in public transportation may be a critical pre-requisite in major Chinese cities.

All in all, cities need to consider more than just road networks and transportation systems while attempting to solve transportation problems. They should pursue a suite of “smart growth” strategies, involving compact urban designs without compromising quality of life, mixed land and building use where appropriate, emphasis on walk-friendly communities, and public participation that helps avoid costly mistakes in decision making.

China can avoid falling into the trap of car dependence if its cities stop pursuing hypermotorization and start adopting smart growth strategies.

With important contributions from Kevin Hsu, Christine Xu, and Michael Davidson.

Engaging the Business World: Side Events by Indian and Chinese Institutions

2009-12-09T17:51:51Z

JingJing Qian, China Country Director, Beijing

In Copenhagen this week and next, hundreds of side events - if not thousands - are taking place. Some of them are “official” COP15 side events meaning they are registered and provided with conference rooms, such as our NRDC’s held yesterday (scroll down to the 4th meeting entitled China and the World: Solving Climate Change Through Practical, On-the-Ground Collaboration); and many others are organized outside the main conference facility. Still some are presented outdoor in more eye-catching forms, e.g. dancing and chanting.

I went to two interesting side events this week that were not held in the Bella Center where the COP15 is taking place.

One was organized by the Indian Energy and Resource Institute (TERI) in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank, and the other by the Chinese environmental NGO Shan Shui Conservation Center in collaboration with WWF.

The Indian workshop was interesting to me because of the subject it discussed: Removing Barriers to Private Sector Investment in Climate Solutions. According to several panelists of the workshop, the private sector, especially the financial segment of it, is capable of filling the big financing gap between the investment needed for CO2 mitigation and what the public funding (government funds) can possibly offer. The total investment needs of the developing countries to reduce CO2 emissions is estimated to be $480 billion/year, while the estimated public sector financial commitments on the table is only around $100 billion (J. Carmody, ADB). Who can fill the huge gap? The private sector, the panelists believe. Public resources are out of sync in what is required for climate action; and 77% of infrastructure needed by 2020 hasn’t built yet and most of them will be in developing countries (D. Waughray, World Economic Forum). To attract private sector investments in fighting climate change, risk management is key, the financial experts said at the workshop. Policies that can reduce investment risk are needed.

The Chinese workshop also concerned the business sector, but from a different angle. It had several Chinese business leaders talking about their perspectives on climate change. Wang Shi, Chairman of China’s famous real estate developer Wanke, and Feng Lun, Chairman of another well-known giant building developer Vantone, each told their personal stories at the workshop, which were quite effective advocacy.

Wang Shi said that when he was a child his father told him that African’s highest mountain Kilimanjaro was snow capped all year round, which puzzled him as he thought Africa was a rather hot place. Several years ago, he climbed Kilimanjaro and sadly found that there was no more snow due to global warming.

Feng Lun is known to be a man of many novel ideas and he shared one at the workshop. Feng has wanted to build a super large “vertical city” to exemplify conservation of farmland in China, where the urbanization process is transforming 1.5 million farmers to urban dwellers each year. Feng invited U.S. and European architects to propose designs and has selected a futuristic plan named Green Hills. This plan involves a group of tall buildings of various shape on 2 square kilometers of land accommodating 150,000 to 200,000 people. It's a very compact design. Feng announced that he had already obtained a piece of land near Beijing to build his vertical city.

What I found more encouraging than these personal convictions was a joint statement by some 200 Chinese companies and organizations, including Wang and Feng, at the event in Copenhagen. The statement recognizes the urgent need to fight global warming and promises to give strong support to Chinese Government’s recent commitment to carbon intensity reduction. These companies also promise to give their own dedication to “exploring models of low-carbon economic growth”.

As NRDC’s President Frances Beinecke pointed out: Global climate change is the single greatest environmental challenge of our generation, we have to rally all possible forces of the societies to collaborate and jointly take actions. In a way, these workshops I went indicated Chinese and Indian business sectors’ growing climate awareness, which should lead to their closer partnerships with governments and other civil society organizations to in fight global warming.

CCS: Does China Need It?

2009-10-16T13:50:40Z

JingJing Qian, China Country Director, Beijing

Since the G8 2008 Summit announced its endorsement for pushing the launch of "at least 20 fully integrated industrial-scale carbon capture and storage demonstration projects worldwide by 2010", CCS has been receiving much increased attention from various circles, from government agencies and academic communities to the media and the public. CCS is also likely to be one of the 3 or 4 priority areas for US-China climate cooperation under the Obama Administration.

But in China, I have heard many people express doubts of the viability of CCS for China. These people include not only regular individuals, but also working-level and high-level policymakers, energy experts, and environmentalists. This is not surprising. Many people in the U.S. and other countries have the same concerns about CCS's high cost and possible safety risks. Chinese experts who are not enthusiastic about CCS also like to underline the energy penalty of CCS, i.e. the extra energy needed to capture, compress, and transport carbon dioxide and inject it deep underground. They point out that the additional energy is likely to come from coal, resulting in more coal consumption.

As an environmentalist, I don't necessarily think CCS is an ideal approach to cutting carbon emissions - avoiding CO2 emissions in the first place, like improving energy use efficiency and deploying low-impact renewable energy, is a better approach. But looking at the broad picture of the global warming trend and the need to stabilize atmospheric CO2 concentrations by the middle of this century, as well as looking into the detail of China's energy and economic development prospects, I recognize that CCS is likely one effective way of making deep CO2 emission reductions under certain conditions. At least given today's level of knowledge and technological ability, CCS appears to be one practical means to slash carbon emissions.

For China, current efforts in energy efficiency and renewable energy development alone won't level or decrease the growth of China's total CO2 emissions fast enough. It is commendable that China has further enhanced its attempt in recent years to raise industrial and building energy efficiency and expand renewable energy deployment.

China's energy intensity has declined 4% per year on average over the past 30 years, according to recent Chinese media reports.
The government's commitment to reducing energy intensity by 20% during the period of 2005-2010 is making headway - by the end of 2008 it already achieved a 10.1% decrease over the 2005 level, as announced by the central government earlier this year.
On the renewable energy front, China's goal is not humdrum either - it aims to increase renewable's share in total primary energy consumption from 6% in 2005 to 15% by 2020 (though this includes a large hydropower component).
Within that goal, the target for wind power was initially set at 30 GW in 2007, but increased to 100 GW in May 2009; solar power capacity was put at 40 GW for 2020, but also has been raised to at least 60 GW (see my colleague's blog).
Like it or not, China also has an ambitious plan for nuclear power. Originally aimed to provide 40 GW by 2020, China now is thinking about building 60 -70 GW instead. This means building 60 or so new plants in ten years. But note that nuclear power's share in China's total energy mix will still be small - 4% corresponding to the original goal and 5% under the renewed plan.

Yet, various scenario studies, including a recent 2050 one by Chinese researchers at the Energy Research Institute,[1] all show that coal will continue to play a major role in powering China's economic development. In that 2050 modeling study, for example, under a "low-carbon economy scenario", coal's share in China's primary energy consumption will shrink from current near 70% to 54% around 2020 and to 36% by 2050, which is still a big portion. This scenario assumes, among other policy and financial measures, that China's energy efficiency in manufacturing will rise 40% by 2030; the costs of solar, wind and nuclear power will be greatly lowered to become commercially competitive; CCS with enhanced oil recovery will be used after 2020; and all new IGCC plants will have CCS beginning in 2050. Interestingly, the cost analysis in this study shows that the Business-as-usual scenario and the Low-carbon scenario will overall require similar amounts of investment (see my reproduced chart in English).

Source: Reproduced and translated from 2050 China Energy and Co2 Emissions Report (in Chinese), Science Press, Beijing, July 2009

Under the low-carbon scenario, China's total CO2 emissions will level after 2035. Many scientists in industrialized countries don't think such a pace is fast enough for global climate stabilization. So more radical measures, e.g. earlier and broader CCS deployment, may be needed. This raises the key questions of CCS' cost and technological feasibility.

Many CCS technologies are already mature:

scrubbing CO2 from a gas stream (either flue gas from coal combustion or syngas from coal gasification),
compressing CO2 into its supercritical state (above 31.1 °C and 7.39 MPa) so that it becomes a liquid,
transporting the supercritical fluid through a pipeline,
exploring and selecting a suitable geologic storage site,
drilling injection wells to some 1000 -3000 meters deep,
injecting the supercritical CO2 into the geological reservoir,
sealing the well when the reservoir is full, and
conducting follow-up monitoring to make sure the gas is not escaping.

Of course, further improvement on these technologies is desirable, especially to reduce the energy penalty of carbon capture. Reducing the energy penalty will reduce the cost of CCS. Right now, the penalty for a new post-combustion coal power plant is 31%, and for a new IGCC plant is 16%.[2] That's why IGCC is receiving attention, even though it is more costly in terms of capital investment.

Is there good potential for reducing the extra energy needed for CCS? I find that this graph showing historical cost trends for emerging energy technologies gives us some confidence. If other energy technologies like solar photovoltaics, windmills, and gas turbines have undergone constant cost reductions when scaling up, there is no reason that CCS technologies won't follow the same trend. That's why having a sufficient number of large-scale demonstration projects represents an important and urgently needed step.

Source: IISA, 1996, from E. Rubin, March 2009: The Outlook for Improved CO2 Capture Systems (ppt), ETH Seminar, Zurich, Switzerland.

The potential safety risk of CCS is no higher than that of nuclear power, to say the least. The IPCC's Special Report on Carbon Capture and Storage (2005) says "Observations from engineered and natural analogues as well as models suggest that the [CO2] fraction retained in appropriately selected and managed geological reservoirs is very likely to exceed 99% over 100 years and is likely to exceed 99% over 1,000 years." So, based on our current knowledge, the chances are very high that almost all of the injected CO2 will stay underground for thousands to millions of years, if projects are properly sited, operated and regulated. According to researchers, on the thousand- year timeframe mineralization will become an important "trapping mechanism", i.e. more and more CO2 will react with the magnesium and calcium in the rock to form solid carbonates (basically becoming part of the rock).

Of course, even though we have all the needed technologies, deploying CCS at a large scale worldwide is no doubt a complex undertaking. But the global climate challenge cannot be solved without big global efforts. There is not sufficient experience in large-scale full-range CCS projects yet. That's why the G8 has called for launching large-scale demonstration projects, which will give us the knowledge concerning how to scale up CCS design and operation, system integration, site selection and monitoring, and the regulatory tools required to make CCS a safe and publicly acceptable mitigation option.

To wrap up, I want to mention a report on near-term CCS opportunities in China that we are developing jointly with a number of U.S. and Chinese experts. The full report will be finished next month, but the executive summary has just been published today.

[1]2050 China Energy and Co2 Emissions Report (in Chinese), Science Press, Beijing, July 2009.

[2] E. Rubin, March 2009: The Outlook for Improved CO2 Capture Systems (ppt), ETH Seminar, Zurich, Switzerland