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London-Britain is to fund four demonstration
carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects
by 2020 in its efforts to reduce carbon emissions,
finance minister Alistair Darling has said.
Finnish utilities Fortum and Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) have entered into co-operation with Maersk Oil and Maersk Tankers, part of the Danish A.P. Moller – Maersk Group, aiming to develop a joint carbon emissions abatement project in the area of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).
Kentucky- Kentucky regulators have issued a draft air permit for a proposed coal-to-natural gas facility to be sited near a coal mine in Muhlenberg County
Houston-With new partnership and licensing agreements, the Houston venture-backed company plans to bring its clean liquid fuels to market with domestic resources.
Coal is the source of about a quarter of the world's energy, a bugbear to environmentalists and a key component of the American, Chinese and developing economies. Coal cannot simply be abandoned, of course, but how can the world rethink its use? A few ideas and prognostications for the future of coal:
There is increasing evidence that recent serious attempts at research and development into trying to make coal clean should be taken seriously, and not disregarded as simply more lies to be automatically dismissed.
Alberta, Canada-Swan Hills Synfuels proposes to gasify coal 1,400 meters below the Earth's surface to recover the energy from coal without mining. The project would start in 2015, generate 300 megawatts of power and sell over 1.3 million tons of carbon dioxide per year for EOR use.
Kingsport, TN -Eastman Chemical Co. is abandoning an industrial coal gasification project in Beaumont, Texas. The company cited higher capital costs, lower natural gas prices, and an uncertain U.S, energy and climate policy.
Salt Lake City Tribune- "we recognize the need to produce electric power when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. If coal gasification can be combined with carbon sequestration to produce truly clean energy from coal, great. But air quality regulators should be pushing utilities into the future, not settling for dirtier old methods."
Rebecca Smith, Wall Street Journal- The head of American Electric Power Co., the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the U.S., said advances in technology would allow the company to eliminate the emissions from its coal-fired power plants by 2025.
Mike Morris, chief executive of Ohio-based AEP, said his company's early experience with a carbon capture and storage project at its Mountaineer power plant in West Virginia had exceeded expectations. As a result, he believes AEP will be able to retire 25% of its coal-burning power plants and install advanced carbon-capture equipment on the remaining 75%.