Australia and China sitting in a tree, but no, not K-I-S-S-I-N-G, more S-I-G-N-I-N-G… a carbon capture trial agreement. There’s no love, or marriage, or Australia with a baby carriage but there is a post combustion capture pilot plant at the Huaneng Beijing Co-Generation Power Plant. Greenbang will leave it to the playground scribes to work out the rhyming potential there.The two lucky parties in the tree-sitting arrangement are Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and China’s Thermal Power Research Institute.

Post combustion capture (PCC) is a process that uses a liquid to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from power station flue gases and is a key technology that can potentially reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing and future coal-fired power stations by more than 85 per cent.The pilot plant is designed to capture 3,000 tonnes per annum of CO2 from the power station and begins the process of adapting this technology to evaluate its effectiveness in Chinese conditions.

Ideally, the whole shebang will be up and running before the Beijing Olympics.