Vattenfall is one of the biggest energy company in Europe. The problem is that they produce coal-based energy which produces high amounts of CO2 that harm the environment and cause global warming. Now, thanks to a new project, Vattenfall will be able to produce coal-based energy without any CO2 emissions.
Seems pretty unbelievable but Lars Josefsson, President and CEO of Vattenfall, says that “this technology will become more important than offshore wind farms.” The Swedish company is looking to produce energy from coal while capturing carbon and storing it.
This technique is called CCS (carbon capture and storage) and is the only way that in the future companies will produce coal-based energy.
“Our project at Schwarze Pumpe puts us at the forefront of this technology in the world,” said Tuomo Hatakka, Senior Executive Vice President at Vattenfall, who believes that “coal has a future, we are convinced of that, but the carbon dioxide emissions from it have no future.”
As clean technology will be their main objective, Vattenfall is planning to build its first “large-scale CCS power station” by 2020.
For the moment, they will build two CCS demonstration plants in Germany and Denmark, but the problem is that “Vattenfall managers talk a lot about supposedly environmentally friendly coal power stations but they are still planning and building conventional coal-fired power stations with high levels of CO2 emissions.”
We are very sorry to hear that, but Tuomo Hatakka gave us hope by saying that “in tandem with EU-wide trading in emission rights, CCS will be economic. At 30 to 35 euros per emission certificate, the technology breaks even.”
We should have thought that the money are a problem as this is what the big companies are after. Well, we are pleased to hear that the costs CCS power plants will compete against the costs of coal power plants with high amounts of CO2 emissions.
September 17th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
But how much CO2 is emmited in the coal mining operation to supply the burner? Solar is still the way to go…
September 18th, 2008 at 6:30 am
Solar just does not have enough yield for large scale power. Nuclear is where the future is.
September 18th, 2008 at 6:44 am
So CO2 is bad right? What are they going to do with it once they capture it??? Solar, as much as I would love to agree… we are still not as efficient with it as we would like to be, the technology still uses green-expensive materials. The best way to proceed will be in the full research and development of H-H-O and Magnetic / Electro-Magnetic technologies. We aren’t that far from a suitable solution with ether one.
September 19th, 2008 at 3:14 am
Hydrogen is NOT a fuel source. it is a battery. It takes energy to make hydrogen (more than comes out). It may be more efficient that using batteries but I doubt it. and I have no idea what ‘Magnetic / Electro-Magnetic technologies’ means. do you mean electric motors? Last I checked we have those.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:56 pm
apparently the power companies need billions of euros in subsidy to develop this technology (according to them)
Tell you what - give me a couple of billion euros and I’ll give you a working solution tomorrow.
….now where would you like your new trees planted guv ?
May 21st, 2009 at 6:49 am
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