believed to contribute 63 percent of global climate change. Thus, CO2 capture remains an important area of CEHP research. In 2009, AUST will continue to enhance their partnership with WKU to target these issues with enhanced scientific processes, adding new sophisticated equipment—such as carbon gas-phase monitoring systems—and expanding their monitoring to two new power plants in Huainan. Future work will also be informed by the emerging goals of the recently established Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP-CDC). As the data accumulates, the team will then collect it in a comprehensive database and disseminate it, with analysis, to decision-makers. Carbon to Crops Initiative Another application of the data is to use captured carbon as a fertilizer in order to store the carbon long-term. CO2 produced from combustion sources, such as fossil-fuel fired power plants, can be captured from the flue gas. When combined with aqueous ammonia, the captured CO2 forms ammonium bicarbonate—an economically and environmentally acceptable nitrogen fertilizer. Since ammonium bicarbonate is water soluble, this fertilizer acts as a “CO2 carrier” to “transport” CO2 from the atmosphere to crops. About 10 percent is directly absorbed by growing plants. The majority (76 percent) of the remaining carbon percolates into the soil as water-soluble bicarbonates—eventually sinking into aquifers—forming environmentally safe carbonate salts of calcium and magnesium. Generally speaking, alkaline soil better captures and stores carbon.
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Policy Implications of Coal City Heavy reliance on coal for energy poses serious challenges for Chinese policymakers. China has stringent regulations for new power plants, but some of the older plants are heavy polluters and shutting down or retrofitting these inefficient plants is costly. Comprehensive monitoring of emissions from old plants and convincing analysis of the deleterious health impacts they are causing can help policymakers better comprehend the total costs of coal emissions. In addition to preventing dirty coal emissions, China needs to stress better energy efficiency, especially in buildings, as it is a cost-effective way to reduce demand for coal-powered energy. Speaking at a May 2008 China Environment Forum meeting, Derek Vollmer of the National Academies noted that because so many cities are developing rapidly, it is also imperative that Chinese cities “build smart instead of build out.” Pollution control will not only save lives but also impact the local economy by reducing the days of work lost and the volume of crops damaged from acid rain, which is especially significant given that much of China’s scarce cropland is located at the peripheries of heavily polluted cities. For more information on the CEHP coal project see http://www.wku.edu/cehp/ or Wei-Ping Pan at Western Kentucky University: wei-ping.pan@wku.edu. Ma Tianjie was a summer 2008 research intern at the China Environment Forum. Currently he is in his second year at American University pursuing a Masters at the School of International Service. He can be reached at tm2198a@american.edu.