Carbon capture + WeChat, Musk and Twitter • China.Table

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Dear reader,

For decades, engineers have been working on technical solutions to filter CO2 from the air. Nevertheless, the capture and trapping of CO2 is still in its infancy. Theoretically, it could be used to capture a large amount of greenhouse gas before it enters the atmosphere. But the technology is still very expensive and technically complex. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that the technology must make an important contribution to achieving climate targets.

China now wants to promote carbon capture technology and bring it to market maturity. The catch: So far, it is mainly the oil and gas industry that uses the process to increase production volumes and thus pump more CO2 into the atmosphere.

Elon Musk knows a thing or two about future technologies. The co-founder of Tesla and PayPal and CEO of SpaceX has his eye on Twitter. Frank Sieren analyzes what Musk might be up to with the social media app. The tech billionaire raves about WeChat, the miracle app that makes everyday life easier for hundreds of millions of Chinese. Musk praises its versatility, saying it can help users in almost any situation in life – be it calling a cab, paying at the supermarket, or even buying a property. Will Twitter therefore become a global WeChat clone in the future? There is definitely a gap in the market for such a “super app”.

Whichever app you read us on: We hope you find today’s issue insightful!

Your
Nico Beckert

Feature

Turning black industries green with carbon capture

Sinopec refinery in Jiangxi: The oil company wants to capture CO2 and store it away.

If the global community wants to achieve its climate targets, carbon dioxide that has already been generated must also be recaptured. However, the technology for this is still expensive. China is not deterred by this and is planning huge plants to capture CO2.

By
Nico Beckert

It is a dream of many managers working on a better environmental balance: Simply separating the CO2 from the other exhaust gases at the end of the production process and disposing of it. It would be much easier to achieve the climate targets that way. This would require a technology that effectively separates CO2 from other gases. Companies are not the only ones who would find this option a good fit. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), part of the emissions must be filtered out of the atmosphere in order to limit global warming to 1.5 to 2 degrees.

This is already possible today, but it is currently still very expensive and thus hardly practical. In recent years, dozens of carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) projects have been put on hold due to high costs. Worldwide, there are only approximately two dozen large industrial plants using CCUS.

China now wants to push CCUS technologies more strongly. This emerges from the guiding strategy for achieving national climate targets. The People’s Republic wants to research CCUS, but also realize “industrial application on a large scale”.

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