Shenhua Group prepares pilot CCS facility

BEIJING - A pilot carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility built by China's Shenhua Group will begin storing carbon dioxide (CO2) early next year, an official with the company said on Tuesday.

Gu Dazhao, general manager of the company's science and technology department, said that the facility, installed at the firm's coal-to-liquids (CTL) plant in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, will start injecting captured CO2 into underground storage facilities in January 2011.

China has already built two small pilot CCS plants in Beijing and Shanghai, but officials remain skeptical about the feasibility of the technology, which is expensive to install and will require about 25 percent more energy to run. CCS technology captures CO2 produced during the coal-combustion process and aims to store it underground indefinitely.