The COAL 21 National Action Plan has been developed over the past year as part the COAL21 program - a collaborative partnership between the federal and state governments, the coal and electricity industries and research organisations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the use of coal.

“An essential part of the solution must be to minimise emissions from our use of coal and other fossil fuels during what will be a very long transition to more sustainable energy systems,” said COAL21 Steering Committee chair Tim Besley.

“Renewable forms of energy may well prove to be the long-term solution, but it will be many decades or longer before these become a significant part of the generation mix.

“The measures outlined in the Action Plan for reducing emissions from coal therefore complement efforts to increase the uptake of renewables and reign in rapidly growing energy demand through measures to increase end-use efficiency.”

The Action Plan identifies a number of emerging technologies that hold the key to reducing or even eliminating emissions from coal. These include technologies to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power stations and permanently store them in underground geological structures, a strategy the Action Plan identifies as the pathway to achieving near zero emissions from coal.

Other priority technologies identified in the Plan include ones that increase the efficiency of coal use and others such as coal gasification that may allow coal to one day provide large amounts of hydrogen gas for a future “hydrogen economy”