MOST and the British government officially launched in Beijing on November 20th, 2007 the Near Zero Emissions Coal Initiative (NZEC). Vice Minister LIU Yanhua and British Minister to China Barbara Woodward addressed the launching ceremony.

The NZEC highlights the joint research and development on the technology of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) for the purpose of emitting almost no carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the process of coal utilization.

The project NZEC is a specific cooperation project under the framework of the MOU on CCS cooperation between China and UK. It will include the researches in China on the feasibility to capture the carbon dioxide emitted by coal-fire power plants by means of the CCS technology and inject it into the geological structures. It mainly includes CCS information sharing and capability building, the envisaging of the China's future energy technology and the carbon capture technology case studies.