Germany is providing lavish support for the construction of new coal plants.

Activated charcoal, however, can remove many pollutants, but can't remove pathogens.

China is now estimated to build two new coal fired power plants each week.

The result has been, particularly in poor countries, the building of more inefficient, old style coal fired power stations.

On the other hand, both China and India are rich in coal, which in turn largely determines the energy mix.

Natural gas is much more environmentally friendly than coal, which continues to be the mainstay of electricity production around the world and in the UK.

Clean coal technologies were at least 25 percent more efficient than traditional coal fired power plants.

When new coal fired power stations are built, they are likely to continue operating for as long as half a century, locking the world in to high levels of emissions.

From 1996 to 2000, China also closed down many coal fired power plants that were producing less than 50 MW of power.

Some Parties are proposing the introduction of efficient fuel for boilers in industry, efficient coal fired boilers, efficient electrical motors, and efficient lighting in industrial buildings.

Whereas a coal burning plant, a normal one gigawatt coal plant, burns 80 rail cars of coal a day, each car having 100 tons.

Today s solar power plants might cost an extra 0.10 kilowatt hour compared to coal, but such plants will be much less costly in the future because of improved technology.

And he's found that worldwide, you could prevent a million deaths switching from wood to charcoal as a cooking fuel. That's remarkable, but up until now, there weren't ways to do it without cutting down trees.

When electricity is needed, the hot salt is pumped to a conventional steam generator to produce superheated steam for a turbine generator as used in any conventional coal, oil or nuclear power plant.

It is little wonder, then, that US Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who two years ago described the expansion of coal fired power plants as his worst nightmare, now calls coal a great natural resource.

Here's your brute force approach. Once you get through your brute force approach, then you just rip off whole mountaintops. And you end up with the single largest source of carbon emissions, which are coal fired gas plants. That is probably not the best use of bioenergy.

Nevertheless, in the near future, China also will build 500,000 MW of coal fired power plants (more than the entire existing US stock), at great risk to the global atmosphere and environment.

It is little wonder, then, that US Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who two years ago described the expansion of coal fired power plants as his worst nightmare, now calls coal a great natural resource.

China uses coal, a particularly CO2 intensive fuel, for 70 of its commercial energy supply, while coal accounts for a third of America s total energy. China is now estimated to build two new coal fired power plants each week.

The country had also recently signed with Egypt a contract for natural gas eliminating the need to build a new coal power plant which would yield 30 to 40 per cent of Israel's total electricity output and was expected to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the short term.

Where this will lead the world can be seen even today China already has the world s most ambitious scheme for expanding nuclear energy, and every year it builds coal fired power plants whose electricity output is roughly equivalent to the capacity of the entire British power grid!

The rich world gets just 1.2 of its energy from hugely expensive solar and wind technologies, and we would never accept having power only when the wind was blowing. Over the next two years, Germany will build ten new coal fired power plants to keep the lights on.

With a growing population and an expanding economy, on the one hand, and a projected rise in the share of coal produced energy from the current 6.5 per cent to 19 per cent in 2030, on the other, our limited fossil fuel resources present the great challenge as we try to strike a balance between pollution and sustained economic growth.