Engineers in the United States and around the world are pushing the envelope with huge innovations in clean coal technology. In addition to creating jobs, engineers are now achieving new benchmarks in research and development with the announcement from Southern Company that the world’s largest power plant CCS project is now fully operational:

Southern Company announced today that its 25-megawatt carbon capture and storage facility is operating and capturing carbon dioxide. Located at Plant Barry near Mobile, Ala., the CCS facility is the world’s largest for a coal-fired generating power plant. It will capture approximately 150,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually – or the equivalent of emissions from 25 MW – for permanent underground storage in a deep saline geologic formation.

Mitsubishi also announced that their contribution to this project will be the first time such technology been deployed in a coal power plant – and that their technology will be commercialized.  In addition to innovations that will help ensure America’s energy security while also reducing the environmental impact of power generation, clean coal technology is being developed to maintain coal as America’s most affordable source of energy. With this in mind, Alstom has predicted that the cost of carbon capture and storage will be competitive with renewable energy in less than four years:

Alstom SA, the world’s third-largest power-equipment maker, said the cost for carbon capture and storage will be competitive with renewable energy as a way of curbing climate-harming emissions by 2015… Governments around the world are seeking to cut emissions while securing energy supplies. Carbon capture technology is one way of preventing emissions blamed for climate change from being released into the atmosphere. More than half the world’s power will still be produced from fossil fuels in 2035, and CCS may account for as much as 20 percent of emissions reductions by 2050, Alstom said, citing International Energy Agency data.

Countries around the world recognize the value and security of using clean coal to generate power, and know the value of carbon capture and storage – which has created an innovation race. The United States is leading the pack, with both the Southern Plant mentioned above and the American Electric Power Mountaineer Plant in West Virginia, the first and second largest projects to date, respectively. But a team in Europe is working to create an inexpensive, innovative system as well:

Various experimental technologies have been developed for removing most or all of the CO2 from smokestack effluents, although no one system appears to have been universally accepted as of yet. One technology that shows some promise, and that could perhaps be used in conjunction with other systems, is called Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC). Norwegian research group SINTEF is now building a special new type of CLC system, for use in the DemoCLOCK pilot project, to be installed at Spain’s Elcogas Puertollano power plant.

You can learn more about the benefits and of clean coal, and join over 200,000 others who are dedicated to creating jobs and innovation by joining America’s Power Army and helping to spread the word: Clean coal technology will power America’s future.