China moves ahead with carbon-capture project

Nature : To help mitigate the contribution of fossil fuel emissions to global warming, China has been slowly advancing its GreenGen carbon capture and storage project. Despite being more than a year behind schedule, China’s project puts the country “at the forefront of global efforts to exploit coal resources without releasing carbon dioxide,” write Jeff Tollefson and Richard Van Noorden for Nature. In 2008 leaders of the G8 group of nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK, and the US) called for the development of 20 such large-scale projects, but countries have been slow to develop the technology because incentives are lacking and costs are high. China plans to fire up the first phase of the project this spring, with the third and final phase scheduled to be completed by 2020.