School of Mechanical Engineering, Malaysia Campus

Project Title Students Full Name Students ID Number Session Supervisor

: Public Perception on Carbon Capture and Storage: Technology, Cost and Risk (CW4) : Aw Keng Hoi : UNIMKL 005014 : 2010/2011 : Dr. Lee Chan Wai

Part II Individual Project Progress Report

Summary This research project aims to study how the Malaysia citizens views on climate changes and the mitigation technologies especially Carbon Capture and Storage technology. The aspects considered are technology, cost and risk in CCS. Literature search and reviews has been conducted from the start of Autumn Semester. Survey design and methodology has been discussed with the supervisor and research assistance and the objective of this research has been clarified. Online survey will be used for this research since it will be easier to collect responses and transferring data. The progression of this research in Autumn Semester is circa 40% and pre-testing of the survey has been done in this semester. More literature reviews have to be done for report writing and discussions. The work plan for Spring Semester is planned at the end of this report.

1.0 Introductions This project aims to study the Malaysia public perception on climate change and green house gasses (GHG) mitigation technologies especially Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). CCS is one of the global warming mitigation technologies to date and have been tested in several developed countries such as United State of America, Norway, Germany, and some of the Europe countries. There were some research studies regarding the potential of CCS on coalfired plant in Malaysia, but as concern, no survey yet to be done on public acceptance on this technology. Literature search and review is discussed in Chapter 2 whereas the survey design and methodology is discussed in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 will be the conclusion for the progression in Autumn Semester. The work plan for Spring Semester is reviewed in Chapter 5. 2.0 Literature Search There process of CCS consists of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the industrial and energy-related sources, transporting the CO2 gas and store them into the geological storage permanently. This research will include the studies on CCS technology, cost and risk, and public perceptions studies by some countries. Literature reviews on survey methodology have to be done in near future. Most of the journals are taken from the Science Direct website. 2.1 Technology There are three main channels for capturing CO2 in CCS: Post combustion capture, Precombustion capture and oxy-fuel combustion. 2.2 Cost and Risk The cost of technology is still high because it is not commercially used. The price indexes for construction raw materials differ from country to country, high variation in natural gas and coal in recent years and the volatility of currency exchanges rates to share the technology are the current economic uncertainties. CCS facing energy penalty during the capturing process. It required energy to capture and recover CO2 from the capturing medium. Hence it will cause more cost in the electricity generation cost. Question arises whether the consumers are willing to pay extra on their electricity bill. There is possible leakage within geological storages. The effects of offshore geological storages leakage will cause the ocean become acidic and affect the marine ecology. Whereas the onshore geological storages leakage will cause the CO2 concentration in atmosphere increases. There are questionings about the possibility that CO2, a weak acid, will contaminates underground rocks and pollutes water; and the increasing of underground pressure might cause gentle ground motion that might damage buildings. 3.0 Survey Design and Methodology The survey questionnaire is designed with the reference of Thomas E Currys climate mitigation research survey in USA. Currys survey has been done three times in United States
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of America in year 2003, 2006 and 2009. Currys survey has been used or adopted by other countries such as United Kingdom and Japan. Contingent valuation method is used in this survey to to estimate economic values for CCS and respondents asked for the amount of compensation they would be willing to accept CCS technology. Online survey is used for collecting responses and data. Higher response rates can be achieved by using this method. Furthermore, online surveys are ideal for providing information in graphics and text format. The online survey builder used is kwiksurveys.com where it provides free service and easy to transfer data. The method to run the survey is by email the link to friends and family and spread them out to their friends and family. It is like networking system and by doing this, more response can be collected. This survey will be sent to government and other organisation through the email provide in their webpage. To confirm the validity of survey response, around 100 hard copies of survey questions will be given to respondents face to face on public area. 500 responses are targeted for this survey. Pre-testing of the survey had been launched on week 11. The respondents of the pre-testing survey are colleagues and friends. The feedbacks are revised and some changes have been done. 4.0 Conclusions Current project progression is estimated circa 40%. More efforts are needed for better progression on Spring Semester. The objective of this research is cleared, that is, to study the public perception but not stakeholder perception on CCS. More literature studies have to be done for final report and discussions. Pre-testing for the survey has been launched on week 11 and online survey will be launched on week 12 of Autumn Semester. 5.0 Work plan on Spring Semester Online survey will be launched on week 12 in Autumn Semester. In the month of January, the survey will be revised to ensure enough responses were collected. Survey hardcopies will be launched during the Semester Break at populated area such as KL central and shopping complex. The result of the survey will be revised and discussed with supervisor and research assistance on Week 1. Data collections and analysis will be conducted from Week 2 to Week 4. Results and discussions will be conducted from Week 3 to Week 6. On Week 7 and Week 8 will be the verbal report preparations which to be assessed on Week 9. Literature summarisation will be conducted from Week 1 to Week 5 for the ease of report writing. Report will be written throughout Week 2 to Week 9. During Week 9 and Week 10 will be report finalising where final report had to be finalised and revised by the supervisor. The final report will be printed and the softcopies of the materials and work will be burned into CD and to be submitted in Week 11.