A Roadmap for U.S.-China Collaboration on Carbon Capture and Sequestration

NEW YORK, November 4, 2009 – Asia Society and the Center for American Progress, together with partners Monitor Group and Dr. S. Julio Friedmann of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, released a new report, “A Roadmap for U.S.-China Collaboration on Carbon Capture and Sequestration.” The report provides a framework for long-term bilateral cooperation in the development, demonstration and deployment of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies.  The report identifies three specific areas of collaboration with China on CCS and outlines how such partnership would accelerate CCS deployment in the United States by five to ten years while generating jobs and consumer savings.

Since both the United States and China rely heavily on coal as an energy source, addressing emissions from coal combustion is a necessary component of a portfolio approach to tackling climate change. Carbon capture and sequestration is a process that mitigates harmful greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel use by separating and capturing carbon dioxide from large point sources such as coal-fired power plants and storing it from the atmosphere through underground geological formations.

"Unless the US and China find a way to collaboratively come together to confront the challenge of climate change, there is little likelihood that a global remedy can be found," said Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director for the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations.

"The United States stands to gain more through collaboration with China than through the independent pursuit of developing CCS technologies,” said John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress.  "The impacts on US job creation and consumer savings would be immense and more than compensate for American investment in this roadmap."

Visit the Initiative for U.S.-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate minisite.