Coal sector hoping to clean up its act

CLEAN COAL sounds like a contradiction in terms but, unlikely as it seems, it's a potentially viable solution to the world's growing energy shortage.

Clean coal is coal that has had the carbon dioxide extracted from it, thus preventing it from polluting the atmosphere. The drawback is that no one has yet arrived at a workable system of doing this, and of storing the greenhouse gas instead of releasing into the atmosphere.

But ESB chief executive Pádraig McManus says someone will find the solution, purely because they have to.

Big economies such as the US and China are sitting on vast reserves of coal. The US has 300 years' worth of it, while China, which is rapidly becoming the world's biggest energy consumer, has a similarly large amount.

The research and development needed for clean coal will cost $1 billion (€633 billion) a year over the next decade, but McManus says it looks like a solution will be found by 2020.

The ESB is preparing for this by planning to build a clean coal-fired generating plant at Moneypoint, Co Clare, by about 2025. "We already have the infrastructure we need for handling coal there," says McManus.

The plant is likely to produce 700 megawatts of electricity, making it the biggest producer in the State in today's terms. According to industry calculations, that's enough power to supply 700,000 average households.

A plant on this scale would cost €1 billion to build, according to McManus.