Final Report Summary - COACH (Cooperation Action within CCS China-EU) The COACH project was launched on 1 November 2006 for a period of 3 years, as part of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) of the European Commission which partly funded its activity. Gathering 20 partners comprising 8 Chinese partners and 12 European partners, the COACH project was conceived as contributing to the first phase of the Near Zero Emission Coal fired power plants (NZEC) programme, a three phase programme developed between the European Union and China and aiming at combating climate change by enabling the deployment in China of thermal power plants equipped with CO2 capture and storage (CCS) facilities. The objective of the COACH project was to initiate a strong and durable cooperation between Europe and China in the domain of clean coal-based power generation to respond to the fast growing energy demand of China while reducing its impact on the climate. Taking advantage of the combination of European and Chinese technologies, the COACH project was conceived as a first step preparing the ground for enabling the implementation of large-scale poly-generation energy power generation facilities including options for coal based electric power generation including the production of synthetic fuels and provisions for heat integration with surrounding industries. In this endeavour, CO2 capture and permanent geological storage - including use for enhanced oil or gas recovery - constitute an inherent and decisive prerequisite of the project. Though technically feasible, the associated production of hydrogen and its further utilisation was decided to not be addressed in the project. COACH has dealt with three techno-economic issues: (1) coal gasification for appropriate coal-based poly-generation schemes combined with CO2 capture and storage; (2) identification of CO2 emission sources of interest as well as reliable geological storage capabilities of CO2 in the Bohai basin located in the Shandong province and schemes for transport infrastructure connecting sources to sinks; (3) legal, regulatory, funding and economic aspects. In addition to that, COACH organised activities for contributing to the sharing of knowledge between China and Europe and the building of Chinese capacity. A logo was designed to illustrate the willingness of developing a tight cooperation between Europe and China on climate change issues. The issue of climate change is clear enough since in COACH, 'CO2' can be easily read. Europe is symbolised by the blue background, the yellow letters and the stars. China is symbolised by the Chinese characters right in the middle of the logo. The cooperation is illustrated first by the intersection of roman and Chinese characters and by the fact that the Chinese characters mean 'cooperation'. A collaborative website created within the first year of the project was used to exchange data and information between the partners. During the second year of the project a public website has been also created. Its address is the following: http://www.co2-coach.com/. A number of recommendations were made as a result, including that the work on capture cost benchmarking should be extended to consider the impact of having both methanol and electricity as product streams, and that a sustained campaign of geological assessment is required to progress from the current high-level scoping study to a point where selection of a storage site will be possible. It was also recommended that further storage site work should focus upon the Dagang oilfield province, the Shengli oilfield province and the saline formations of the Huimin sub-basin. Further work on the Kailuan mining area should wait until there is a further assessment of the implications of CO2 storage on the economic value of the coal. However, most importantly, in future work, attention should be given to identifying and avoiding potential conflicts of interest. Related documents Final Report - COACH (Cooperation Action within CCS China-EU)
