FIRST TEST FOR CLEAN COAL

 The world's first power plant free of CO2 emissions has begun
generating "clean energy" in Germany.

The Swedish energy provider Vattenfall switched on the plant at
Spremberg, Germany yesterday.

The plant is operated from a lignite coal-powered 30 MW generator that
liquefies the CO2 and then transports the waste into an underground
storage site.

Vattenfall hailed the project as a milestone in environmentally
friendly energy production, dismissing claims by several environmental
groups that the technology isn't feasible or commercially viable.

The $100 million 30 MW oxyfuel thermal pilot plant will pump CO2
emissions - in the form of compressed liquid - into a former natural
gas field.

The technique is a "technological achievement" to radically reduce CO2
emissions, Vatternfall CEO Lars Josefsson told Daily Planet Media.

Vatternfall plans to export its clean coal technology worldwide with
other demonstration plants scheduled for Mongstad, Norway;
Nordjylland, Denmark and Janschwalde, Germany.

Vatternfall also intends heading a climate change campaign to set a
world standard price for carbon.

Most energy experts agree that provided the Spremberg plant can
produce affordable electricity it will spur a new era for brown, black
and shale coal.

The British Government launched a competition for the construction of
clean coal power plants ten times the size of the German plant now
under trial.

Coal is a primary source of carbon dioxide emissions with 80 per cent
of the world's energy dependent on the fossil fuel.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is designed to separate
carbon dioxide during the process of generating electricity and
burying the CO2 a kilometer or more underground.

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