Clean coal research accelerates amidst projected power demand

Even with a dramatic increase in the use of renewables, a new 1000 MW coal plant would need to be built somewhere in the world every two days for 50 years to meet a projected four-fold increase in global power demand by 2050, reports Modern Power Systems, a monthly electricity industry magazine. As a result, the American utility sector's Electric Power Research Institute has launched the Global Coal Initiative to accelerate research into clean coal generation. The research will concentrate on sequestering carbon dioxide emissions in sinks -- such as plant life sinks or those provided by exhausted oil fields -- and on ways of winning energy from coal with no net CO2 emissions.