China eyeing U.S. clean coal project
Given that China is likely to build dozens of new coal plants over the years to meet its rapidly growing energy needs, and given that China can’t afford to add more pollution to its already polluted air, and given the world can’t afford to see an exponential rise in greenhouse gases coming from China, it’s nice to hear that this fast-growing economy is interested in joining the U.S. government’s FutureGen clean coal project. India and South Korea have already joined FutureGen, and apparently China’s largest power company joined last year. China likes the idea because the coal gasification technology used will not only generate cleaner power from coal, it will also produce hydrogen that could be used to support the country’s move toward fuel-cell vehicles. Unfortunately, it’s likely that many of those “dozens of new coal plants” will be built on old dirty technology before the fruits of this project are realized…
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca