Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
CCS and IPR
ity market just plays such a role in discouraging the
innovation of electricity technology. Companies
prefer to fight more market share rather than in-
novate state-of-the-art technology. Over the past
three decades of rapid economic growth, China has
not produced any world leading power technology
though China is the second largest power producer
in the world. China's annual R&D investment has
kept a growing pace in the past decade and will
reach 2% of Gross Domestic Product in 2010.
The vast investment and encouraging policy have
caused significant growth of IPR filling and grants
but the majority of high-tech inventions are still
owned by foreign firms from developed countries.
What Chinese companies have are mainly non-
invention patents, like utility model and design
(E3G, 2008).
Fossil fuel sector regards CCS as both a business
opportunity and survival solution in global climate
regime. The opportunity means making money
from trading CCS technology. The survival solu-
tion can secure a living with future low carbon
economy. This concern may explain why most
fossil fuels companies around the world, particu-
larly coal power plants, have actively attended the
movement to develop CCS. Chinese state-owned
coal power giants have also realized this point and
invested in CCS R&D and clean coal technology
with the financial supports from central govern-
ment. Some international aids from government,
academic and business organizations also join the
CCS RD&D in China. Through international co-
operation, Chinese coal power companies expect
to hold some core CCS IPR in the competition of
RD&D. Meantime, international partners would
have good understanding of China's institutional
context and energy market. The understanding will
assist international partners to acquire interests in
future China CCS market. However, the current
international partnerships on CCS are mainly
about knowledge sharing and capacity building
rather than significant innovation activities. That is
because developed countries have strong concern
on IPR protection in China. The typical argument
is that in industrial countries, private-public part-
nership is widely applied to develop CCS and
involves with colossal investments. This situation
usually makes CCS technology transfer to China
costly. Both the lack of financial resource and the
weak record of IPR protection in China restrict
the future CCS technology transfer (E3G, 2009).
Strong IPR protection leads to abundant in-
novation activities and fruitful outcomes, but
poor IPR protection discourage technological
innovation. IPR protection interacts with market
competition situation. A free market encourages
fair and powerful IPR protection. A monopoly or
oligopolistic market often deters IPR protection as
well as technological innovation. China's electric-
ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION'S
IMPACT ON CCS IN CHINA
CCS's Environmental Impacts
The entire process of CCS application, from
capture, transportation to storage, may produce
various social and environmental consequences.
In the capture stage, CCS projects usually have
proportional increase of solid waste and water use
due to more fuel consumption. The majority coal
combustion technologies with CCS have higher
air pollutant emission rates per MWh than those
without CCS. While sulphur dioxide emission
decreases, NOx and ammonia emission increase
(WRI, 2008). The increase of NOx and ammo-
nia may lead to negative effect to water bodies,
for example eutrophication and decline of water
quality (Koomneef et al., 2008). In addition, the
noticeable loss of energy efficiency happen both
in new coal power CCS projects and CCS retrofits
(WRI, 2008).
In the transportation and storage stages, CCS
projects have the risk of leakage over the ground
