More Power, Less Grit

In architectural drawings, the prototype power plant called FutureGen is most noteworthy for what's missing: a smokestack towering skyward like a perpetually lit cigarette. That's because the experimental coal-fired facility will generate 275 megawatts of electricity a year--enough to power 150,000 American households--with near-zero emissions. Instead of releasing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day, FutureGen's clean-coal technologies will "capture" the deadly greenhouse gas for permanent storage deep underground. The $1 billion project, a public-private partnership funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, could be operational by 2012 in either Illinois or Texas and "will lay the groundwork for developing similar power plants throughout the world," the consortium forecasts.

Though distant, that vision is heartening. Coal, the mineral that stoked the Industrial Revolution back in the 19th century, remains the most globally abundant fossil fuel, with an estimated 250 years of reserves in forms ranging from translucent black rock to damp brown sludge reminiscent of primordial peat moss. It could power China and India to global economic leadership, replace imported natural gas in the United States and slash Europe's dependence on foreign oil. But used the old-fashioned way, experts warn, coal will shroud planet Earth in enough carbon dioxide to trigger polar meltdowns in this lifetime.

Today, all but a handful of the thousands of coal-fired power plants in operation worldwide are smog-belching dinosaurs. The largest generate as much smog a year as 2 million cars; for every ton of fuel they burn, two tons of carbon dioxide plume skyward out the smokestack. Today coal accounts for as much as a third of all man-made greenhouse gases--the largest single contributor. Worse, hundreds of additional coal-fired power plants scheduled to be built by 2030--most in China, India and the United States--will extend the use of dirty technologies for 60 years more. A 2005 study published by the Washington-based Natural Resources Defense Council put the coal quandary more bluntly: "If we burn this stuff the old way," it said, "the planet is toast."

Old-school power plants burn coal to heat water and drive steam turbines, a process that garners just 35 percent of the fuel's energy potential. State-of-the-art plants convert coal to gas in chemical reactions, then burn it in modern turbines and use the heat to drive secondary steam generators--pushing total efficiency to near 50 percent. What separates FutureGen from a pack of experimental clean-coal technologies is its plan to eliminate smokestack emissions by entombing CO2 underground, either in spent oilfields or in saline aquifers thousands of feet below the surface.

The rub is money. Combined-cycle plants are twice as expensive as conventional ones, and carbon capture is still experimental--which in a place like China translates as "too risky." Indeed, China's power equation is so bottom-line-driven that just 20 percent of plants nationally even wash coal or put scrubbers on smokestacks to abate acid rain. Power shortages and $70-per-barrel oil have pushed planners in Beijing to rely more heavily on coal, leading to horrific pollution in major cities. But Beijing is aware of the problem. At the last G8 meeting, President Hu Jintao called for global cooperation on clean-coal technology, and China's current five-year plan touts cleaner power as an imperative--a critical change to the "get rich first, clean up later" thinking of the 1990s.

The Kyoto Protocol offers financial incentives so developing nations can affordably opt for clean power on the logic that they can do so more cheaply than rich countries. It awards carbon credits to projects that cut greenhouse-gas emissions in developing countries, credits that can be purchased by companies in developed nations to meet their own clean-air quotas. Michael Lehmann, head of international climate-control services for the Norwegian consultancy DNV, says the program makes it easier for technology holders in Europe or North America to sell their know-how to a Chinese power company at a discount on the condition that they obtain carbon credits from the project. "This could be an important vehicle for making technology transfers happen," says Lehmann.