US-based Duke Energy, an electric power holding company, has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding in Beijing with an electric utility in China, China Huaneng Group, planning to explore various renewable and other clean-energy technologies.
Under the MOU, top executives from both Duke Energy and China Huaneng Group will launch a series of meetings to exchange information and explore potential long-term cooperative initiatives to reduce coal plant emissions and develop other renewable sources of electricity generation.
Jim Rogers, Chief executive officer of Duke Energy, said: “To deal with global warming requires rapid action from all of us, and clearly China Huaneng Group and Duke Energy are playing a leadership role on this issue. Working together, the US and China can commercialize and drive down the cost of these technologies for the benefit of the entire world.”
Huang Yongda, vice president of China Huaneng Group, said: “China Huaneng Group has been attaching great importance to emission reduction and clean energy development, and has made great achievements on that. Duke Energy is clearly at the forefront of renewable and clean-energy development in the U.S. We look forward to a mutual sharing of information and technology between the two companies and to jointly promote the development of clean energy technology.”
One key focal point would be on emerging cleaner-coal technologies including carbon capture and sequestration and coal gasification.
Duke Energy is constructing a clean coal gasification power plant with 630MW capacity in Edwardsport, Indiana, which is scheduled to commence its operations in 2012. In addition, Duke Energy is spending $17m to study carbon capture at the site and proposing to spend $121m to study the potential capture and permanent underground storage of approximately 60% of the plant’s carbon dioxide emissions.
The company is also constructing an advanced 825MW pulverized coal plant in Cliffside, North Carolina, and retiring 1,000MW of older, less efficient coal plants. The Cliffside and Edwardsport projects received around $250m under the U.S. Department of Energy clean coal tax incentives.
China Huaneng Group has constructed China’s first carbon capturing demonstration facility in Huaneng Beijing Cogeneration Power Plant. It has also built a larger scale carbon capturing facility in Huaneng’s coal-fired power plants in Shanghai which is under construction, and is scheduled to go online by the end of 2009.
Huaneng is also constructing a 250MW IGCC demonstration power plant in Tianjin under its GreenGen project. It is expected to be an environmentally friendly coal-fired power plant in China, to be operational in 2011.