Australia-based mining giant BHP Billiton on Monday announced it would award $7.37 million to Peking University for research aimed at promoting carbon capture, utilization and storage in the Chinese industrial sector and beyond.
The three-year collaboration, which will involve additional groups, is aimed at determining policy, technological, and economic obstacles to using CCUS in industry, specifically the iron and steel sectors, according to a BHP press release.
“The application of carbon capture, use and storage may prove to be important to reducing the volume of greenhouse gas emitted by the steel sector in China and elsewhere. However investment in the technology is behind where it needs to be,” BHP Billiton CEO Andrew Mackenzie said in the release. “China leads the way in the planning and development of large scale CCUS projects and should CCUS become commercially proven it could be a significant industry for China.”
The partners hope their work will lead to additional capital for CCUS development in the steel industry and other sectors, Mackenzie said.
BHP Billiton and Canadian utility SaskPower in February established a joint Carbon Capture Knowledge Center aimed at sharing lessons learned to the power industry from SaskPower’s Boundary Dam CCS project in Saskatchewan.
