Technology Overview

Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Coal-fired Power Generation

Background

"While renewable energy will play an important role in the total energy mix in the years ahead fossil fuels will continue for some time to provide the main sources of energy for power and transport. It is on these cheap fossil fuels that Australia has built significant elements of its industrial base. It is for this reason that the government is placing considerable importance on encouraging technologies that hold out the prospect of cleaning up the emissions from fossil fuels.

The technologies of promise here are particularly coal gasification combined with the sequestration of carbon dioxide in underground strata and aquifers...."

Excerpt from the opening address by Federal Minister for the Environment and Heritage, The Hon Dr David Kemp MP to the "Beyond Kyoto: Economic Impacts and Alternative Mitigation Strategies Conference", organised by the Institute of Public Affairs, Melbourne, 28 February 2003.

COAL21's role

The COAL21 program is aimed at fully realising the potential of advanced technologies to reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions associated with the use of coal.

Two of the key technologies to be evaluated by COAL21 include:

• Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power generation systems - regarded worldwide as the leading-edge option in coal-fired power generation for the near- to - medium term, and
  
  
• Carbon Capture and Storage (CO2 Sequestration) - a means of eliminating, or very much reducing, emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Pictured:
Members of the Australian government-industry clean coal mission to the US and Canada at the Polk Power Station, Tampa Florida, November 2002. The gasification and hot gas cleanup units of the IGCC facility are shown in the background.

The following diagram shows in summary form how these key technologies combine to achieve near zero greenhouse gas emmissions in the context of coal-fired power generation. Together they represent a two-pronged approach to, firstly, achieving greater efficiencies in power generation (50% and greater) and secondly, providing a practical solution to curbing emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The diagram also shows another option for using the Syngas from the gasification process - the production of chemicals and liquid fuels. Hydrogen produced in this way will underpin the transition to a future hydrogen economy.