Yahoo News: 'Emissions-free' coal plant pilot fires up in Germany
But green campaigners have denounced the project as a cosmetic operation that does not really address the problem of global warming.
At the site of the massive "Schwarze Pumpe" ("Black Pump") power station in the old East Germany, Vattenfall wants to the new method to allow it continue burning coal — but with radically reduced emissions.
To do so, the Swedish firm is using Carbon Capture and Storage, or CCS for short, which captures the greenhouse gases produced when fossil fuels are combusted.
This prevents the greenhouse gases escaping into the Earth's atmosphere and contributing to global warming.
The captured gases are then sharply compressed until they become liquid and are injected deep underground, sealed away and therefore will not contribute to the increase in the Earth's temperature, Vattenfall says.
In the case of the pilot plant at Spremberg near the Polish border, the concentrated carbon dioxide is injected "for permanent storage" in a gas field in northern Germany.
Underground reservoirs of carbon dioxide already occur naturally in geological formations where it has been trapped by sedimentary rocks in much the same way as oil or gas, it says.
Depleted gas and oil fields — such as the destination for Spremberg's emissions — are one possibility for storage, as are fields still with some oil and gas still in them. …
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