Green Options

Germany’s Secretary of the Chancellery, Thomas de Maizière, and Prime Minister of Brandenburg, Matthias Platzeck, together with Swedish Minister for Higher Education and Research Lars Leijonborg opened on Tuesday the world’s first “clean coal” plant, one that is ready to capture and store its carbon dioxide emissions. The 30-megawatt, $100 million Schwarze Pumpe pilot plant will burn washed lignite coal in an atmosphere of oxygen instead of regular air, producing some 10 tons per hour of compressed CO2. This compressed CO2 will then be captured and buried under a depleted gas field.

Coal and nuclear plants may not be dropping like flies, but the business climate and the planet’s climate have caused some utilities to think twice about investing in them.

Tampa Electric of Florida has announced that it won’t build a coal plant to meet future energy needs, as originally planned. The coal plant was going to be an integrated gasification combined-cycle plant, or IGCC, which means that the coal is broken down into

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