The World in 2030

184 The World in 2030
important as energy. But whatever the true figure, it is clear
that coal will continue to play a major role in generating
electricity.
But does coal-fuelled power generation have to be the
filthy source of carbon emissions it is today? In April 2007
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology produced a report
called ‘The Future of Coal’. The report’s authors came to the
following conclusion:
There are many opportunities for enhancing the
performance of coal plants in a carbon-constrained
world – higher efficiency generation, perhaps through
new materials; novel approaches to gasification, CO 2
capture, and oxygen separation; and advanced system
concepts, perhaps guided by a new generation
of simulation tools. An aggressive R&D effort in the
near term will yield significant dividends down the
road, and should be undertaken immediately to help
meet this urgent scientific challenge. 352
Capturing and ‘sequestering’ the carbon (storing the CO 2
in an environmentally benign way) will be big business by
2030. The German industrial giant Siemens intends to play
a large role in applying this technology to coal-fired power
generation. In March 2007 it issued a press release headed
‘Coal Gets Cleaner’:
If all coal-fired power plants were upgraded today
with the latest technology, then the amount of carbon
dioxide emissions would be reduced by about
two billion tons annually.