Battleangel

Swedish energy company Vattenfall is to build the world’s first pilot plant for a coal-fired power station which does not release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

“The risks associated with climate change require decisive action on the part of business and industry,” said the company’s president and CEO, Lars G. Josefsson.

The plant, part of a project to develop and commercialise the new technology, will be situated in Brandenburg, south of Berlin. It will take three years to build, at a cost of 370 million kronor (40 million euros).

By firing the fuel using pure oxygen and recycled carbon dioxide, Vattenfall says it can separate the carbon dioxide that it produced in the combustion process “in so pure a form that it can be retrieved and later stored permanently in rock formations underground” - instead of being pumped into the atmosphere.

Source: The Local

Obviously coal supplies are finite like all fossil fuels but at least initiatives like this could keep us peddling, without totally wrecking the environment, until we perfect nuclear fusion, solar cells or other far-flung technologies. It’s no coincidence that they’re building it in Germany either since they use vast amounts of coal power. Sweden already has its bases covered with nuclear fission and hydroelectric power essentially, for now at least.