Enfin les USA bougent pour l'environement

New Power Plant Aims to Help Coal Clean Up



Burning coal provides half the electricity in the U.S. and one third of
greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Capturing that carbon dioxide and
storing it will be essential if climate change induced by such
pollution is to be averted, according to reports from the U.N.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Dubbed carbon capture and storage (or carbon
sequestration), such technology will be fully demonstrated for the
first time near Mattoon in southeastern Illinois, the FutureGen
Alliance (a public–private partnership to build a prototype clean-coal
plant) announced.

"[Mattoon] has a reliable and assured
water source. It has excellent geologic structure and conditions for
carbon sequestration," says Lawrence Pacheco, a spokesman for the
alliance of 14 of the largest coal burners and miners in the world,
including American Electric Power in Columbus, Ohio, Australia-based
BHP Billiton and China Huaneng Group headquartered in Beijing. "The
goal is to break ground in 2009 and be operational in 2012." [more]