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India and France can work together in the area of clean coal technologies as the two countries have joined hands for setting up nuclear power facilities, Minister of State for Power Jairam Ramesh said."Clean coal technology is another area where France and India can cooperate and certainly it has benefits to both sides like the partnership Areva now has with NPCIL," Ramesh said at a FICCI meeting on cooperation in climate change with France.

French firm Alstom is a global player in super critical clean technology. "Alstom is very closely involved in the energy sector. We are making transition to super critical technology in power generation and in that Alstom is going to play a very important role," Ramesh said. He said Alstom already has a tie-up with Indian power equipment maker BHEL.

India, which depends largely on coal-fired power generation, wants to shift to 'super critical technology' to drastically reduce carbon emissions. The state-owned NTPC has begun the process of acquiring the key technology for its existing plants as also for using the new projects.

Clean coal technology is an umbrella term used to describe technologies being developed that aim to reduce the environmental impact of coal energy generation.These include chemically washing minerals and impurities from the coal, gasification , treating the flue gases with steam to remove sulfur dioxide,carbon capture and storage technologies to capture the carbon dioxide from the flue gas and dewatering lower rank coals (brown coals) to improve the calorific quality, and thus the efficiency of the conversion into electricity.

Clean coal technology usually addresses atmospheric problems resulting from burning coal. Historically, the primary focus was on sulfur dioxide and particulates, due to the fact that it is the most important gas which leads to acid rain. More recent focus has been on carbon dioxide (due to its likely impact on global warming) as well as other pollutants. Concerns exist regarding the economic viability of these technologies and the timeframe of delivery, potentially high hidden economic costs in terms of social and environmental damage, and the costs and viability of disposing of removed carbon and other toxic matter.

Source -Hindu