Mark C. Thurber and Xander Slaski are currently in Pune and has met with First Energy (formerly BP emerging consumer markets) to better understand their business model, particularly around the supply network. Around Pune, Mark and Xander had the opportunity to see the stove production facility as well as the biomass processing plant. Extensive discussions with dealers and consumers were excellent opportunities to learn more about the factors underpinning demand.

Xander will be traveling to Delhi on December 12th and is scheduled to meet with members of the government to discuss the new Indian cookstove initiative as well as LPG policy, rural electrification, and the new solar mission. A key motivation for visiting Delhi is also to meet with staff at Philips, as they are in the preliminary stages of rolling out a commercial stove program. Xander will also be meeting with other organizations in Delhi involved in low-income energy services, including TERI.

PESD researchers Thomas C. Heller and Gang He contribute to a new report on US China CCS Collaboration.

The capture and permanent storage of CO₂ emissions from coal combustion is now widely viewed as imperative for stabilization of the global climate.  Coal is the world’s fastest growing fossil fuel.  This trend presents a forceful case for the development and wide dissemination of technologies that can decouple coal consumption from CO₂ emissions—the leading candidate technology to do this is carbon capture and storage (CCS). 

China simultaneously presents the most challenging and critical test for CCS deployment at scale.   While China has begun an handful of marquee CCS demonstration projects, the stark reality to be explored in this paper is that China’s incentives for keeping on the forefront of CCS technology learning do not translate into incentives to massively deploy CCS in power plant applications as CO₂ mitigation scenarios would have it.  In fact, fundamental and interrelated Chinese interests—in energy security, economic growth and development, and macroeconomic stability—directly argue against large-scale implementation of CCS in China unless such an implementation can be almost entirely supported by outside funding.  This paper considers how these core Chinese goals play out in the specific context of the country’s coal and power markets, and uses this analysis to draw conclusions about the path of CCS implementation in China’s energy sector. 

Finally, the paper argues that effective climate change policy will require both the vigorous promotion and careful calculation of CCS’s role in Chinese power generation.  As the world approaches the end of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 and crafts a new policy architecture for a global climate deal, international offset policy and potential US offset standards need to create methodologies that directly address CCS funding at scale.  The more closely these policies are aligned with China’s own incentives and the unique context of its coal and power markets, the better chance they have of realizing the optimal role for CCS in global climate efforts.

In a paper released in the 1 August 2009 issue of the Economic and Political Weekly Varun Rai and David G. Victor outline a strategy to inform which efforts in India offer the most leverage on emissions warming gases and which are most credible because they align with India's own interests.

The World Affairs Council is broadcasting the keynote and plenary sessions from its 2009 Annual International Affairs Conference on KQED Public Radio (88.5 FM) for four nights at 8 pm, starting May 4-7. The theme of this year's conference was "Global Priorities: Critical Choices for the Obama Administration.

David Victor's talk on "Engaging China", part of a plenary session entitled "Three Challenges in One – The Economy, Energy, and the Environment", airs Tuesday, May 5 at 8 pm.