Tonnes of watt ifs over coal’s future

If the global average level of efficiency of coal-fired power plants were 5 per cent higher than expected, such an accelerated move towards more efficient technologies would lower global carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector by 8 per cent. In the long term, carbon capture and storage technology on a significant scale is another potential “game-changer” for coal. But while the technology exists to capture, transport and permanently store the emissions in geological formations, it has yet to be demonstrated on a large scale in the power and industrial sectors and so costs remain uncertain.