Clean-energy technologies are growing up. Now, if they’re going to become a significant part of the global energy mix, the world’s approach to them will have to grow up too. That will require a less emotional, more rational understanding of the changing relationship between China and the U.S. in the global clean-energy race. The two countries have sharply different agendas in this competition, yet each needs the other if it’s to achieve its own goals. The surest sign of that dependence comes in following the money: Clean-energy investment is ramping up in both directions across the Pacific. Yet this relationship is prompting increasing unease and debate. In this session, a longtime writer about energy and the environment explores how China’s clean-energy push is affecting American industry and consumers — and how America, moving forward, might play most effectively to its own clean-energy strengths.

• asia
• china
• clean tech
• energy and climate policy

Humans have fundamentally changed how energy flows through the global ecosystem, with consequences for ourselves and for other species. The consequence for ourselves is that we are locked into having to produce enormous amounts of energy if we want to sustain the current human population, leave alone keeping up with the increase in population projected over the next three decades. The consequence for other species is that how we produce our needed energy will largely determine whether biodiversity can be sustained at present levels, or whether the sixth mass extinction will be unavoidable. Avoiding substantial loss of biodiversity will require holding the amount of “natural” energy we co-opt from other species (that is, energy produced from photosynthesis and measured as net primary productivity) at present values, and shifting energy-production away from fossil fuels fast enough to avoid the most ecologically-damaging effects of global climate disruption.

China makes roughly 80% of its electricity by burning coal. That helps explain why Beijing’s skies darkened earlier this year in what some observers dubbed the “airpocalypse.” It also explains why China has become the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Now, even as China builds more coal-fired power plants than any other country, it’s scrambling to roll out technologies to burn that coal more cleanly — from anti-smog filters to systems to capture carbon dioxide and shoot it underground.

China has launched the world’s largest “clean coal” experiment. In this conversation, the top technology officers from China’s largest power company and from a U.S power company that's investing in that Chinese work will assess the state of cleaner coal-burning technology and its prospects for real-world rollout in China and around the globe.

• asia
• carbon sequestration
• china
• clean tech
• coal

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) on a large scale is regarded by many climate scientists as one indispensable element of any global carbon-reduction strategy. It is axiomatic that there can be no large-scale CCS project without a ‘sink’ for the carbon. The excellent work already performed on various geological sinks demonstrates that several different types of sink appear well-suited to large-scale sequestration. However, it is equally true that large-scale carbon sequestration also requires large-scale carbon capture projects. Very few exist, and almost none in the electric power sector, which is a leading source of global carbon emissions.

Seattle-based Summit Power Group is attempting to change this by developing several very large scale CCS projects in the electric power sector, both in the US (e.g., the Texas Clean Energy Project, which will capture and sequester 2.5 million tons of CO2 per year) and the UK (e.g., the Captain Clean Energy Project, which will capture and sequester more than 4 million tons of CO2 per year). Eric Redman is the president and chief executive officer of Summit, and will discuss the technical, commercial, financial, permitting, and public policy challenges of trying to be a ‘first mover’ on commercial-scale CCS projects in the power sector.

• carbon sequestration
• clean tech
• climate change
• coal
• energy and climate policy
• industry expertise