‘Clean' coal-fired power will not work: industry insider

An industry insider has heaped scorn on the push to create electricity from "clean" coal-fired power, dismissing it as unviable.

The Finkel Review recommended a clean energy target, which could include CCS.

Coalition MPs and coal-industry advocates are lobbying for new-generation coal-fired power stations with technology that captures the greenhouse gas emissions and stores them underground as the future basis of mass-scale electricity supply in Australia.

But David Hilditch, who spent many years trying to commercialise the technology, told the ABC it would not work.

Read the ABC News story by Stephen Long - “‘Clean' coal-fired power will not work: industry insider.”

Fuel Cells: Promising, but struggling to catch on

Fuel cells have been the next best clean-energy thing for, well, a long time.

A technology with roots in the 1800s and modern-day use in every NASA-manned space flight from Apollo through the end of the space shuttle program, fuel cells just kind of look like a big box. Inside, they electrochemically combine hydrogen and the oxygen from ambient air to create electricity.

The by-products of that reaction are heat and water. The heat can be recycled into the fuel cell itself and/or used for external heating and cooling – generally referred to as combined heat and power. That makes stationary fuel cells – the kind used for electricity, as opposed to ones used in vehicles – extremely efficient and as clean an energy source as solar and wind.

But because the hydrogen source for most fuel cells comes from natural gas, they are generally not considered renewable, leaving them in an environmental limbo.

Read the Yale Climate Connections story - “Fuel Cells: Promising, but struggling to catch on.”