August 6, 2009. Copyright 2009, Graphic News. All rights reserved Race hots up for cleaner coal power plants LONDON, August 6, Graphic News: Power companies are in a race to build the world’s first full-scale “clean coal” power plant capable of cutting greenhouse gas emissions. In Queensland, Australia, a consortium led by multinational GE Energy plans to build a 400 megawatt plant, while state-backed Zerogen proposes a 530 megawatt plant -- both are expected to be ready for commercial operation in late 2015. In Japan, Osaki CoolGen Corporation plans to have a 170MW, low-emission, demonstration plant in Hiroshima prefecture operational by 2017. But all three may be beaten by a Duke Energy project in the United States -- a 630MW plant in Indiana is expected to be the largest clean coal facility in the world when it is completed by the end of 2010. All four power plants will use integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) technology which enables the use of large amounts of coal to generate electricity, but with lower emissions than traditional pulverized coal technology, and with the ability to capture carbon for storage or enhanced oil recovery. In the “integrated gasification” part of IGCC, coal is turned to gas before being burned in the “combined cycle”, where it first drives a gas-turbine generator before the waste heat is captured to power a second steam turbine generator. Prototype and pilot-scale gasification plants are currently operating or under construction in the United States, Germany, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, India and Japan. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) calculates that last year human activity produced 29.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, of which 12.3 billion tonnes were generated by coal-burning power stations. About half of this greenhouse gas is absorbed by natural processes -- in the world’s oceans and by plants -- but the rest lingers in the atmosphere for decades. The GE and Zerogen plants will be capable of capturing 90 percent of the carbon dioxide for underground storage, while the target of the CoolGen facility is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero. The Duke Energy will cut emissions by 45 percent. The EIA estimates that an IGCC plant capturing 90 percent of carbon emissions would generate electricity at about 71 euros per MWh as against 44 euros for a pulverized coal plant. For the consumer, the extra cost of carbon capture would amount to about 0.03 euros a kilowatt-hour -- a small price for saving the planet. /ENDS Conversions 71 euros = US$103 = A$122 44 euros = US$63 = A$75 0.03 euros = US$0.04 = A$0.05 172 euros = US$248 = A$294