OREANDA-NEWS. The IEA Clean Coal Centre 40th anniversary Executive Committee meeting was held in Windsor (England) on October 23, 2015.

Founded in 1975, the Center for Clean Coal is a leading international organization, that gathers, analyzes information, conducts objective research, and counsels on clean and efficient use coal use. The center is funded by the different countries that are part of the organization, as well as industrial companies, which allows its research and conclusions to remain impartial. The only Russian participant of the Clean Coal Centre is the joint-stock company Siberian Coal Energy Company (SUEK).

During the course of the session, members of the organization shared their experiences from different countries, in particular the USA, China, Germany, Japan and India in the implementation of clean coal projects in the mining, processing and theuse of coal, and coal power generation projects.

In his address to the members of the Executive Committee, SUEK General Director Vladimir Rashevsky noted that "Coal Centre actively finds, creates and summarizes all that is most important and necessary when it comes to matters of the environmentally friendly production, processing and utilization of coal. Today, coal is the most important source of energy in the world and will remain so for many years to come. It is no secret that the stereotype of coal as a "dirty fuel" still lives on. We have an important task ahead of us - to provide objective information to demonstrate the great potential of coal, and its prospects as a clean fuel.

According to the Chairman of the SUEK Board of Directors Andrei Melnichenko, coal, the most widely-used and cheapest fuel "will continue to play a key role in the energy balance of humankind." At the same time, technologies are actively under improvement, to minimize the impact of coal production and use on the environment, the development of which is widely supported by the Russian coal industry.

In part, Melnichenko notes that the efficiency of modern coal plants is a third higher than of those that were built earlier, and and by replacng older coal-fired stations, the carbon dioxide emissions will be reduced.

"In Russia, meanwhile, defining the development of cogeneration -combined production of heat and power- as key objective is long overdue. For example, the energy conversion efficiency from burning coal at a station running in cogeneration mode reaches 70 to 80% as opposed to the average energy conversion efficiency for conversion into electricity, which is about 30 to 35%," Melnichenko said.

Current coal industry reduces the load on the environment, using modern production technology and modern practices of land reclamation. The coal-fired generation has three basic objectives of reducing emissions of coal power plants. In particular, improving the efficiency of power units, which reduces coal consumption and as a result reduced emission volume. Also currently under development are techologies of complete abatement of emissions at modern stations, as well as the capture and underground storage of carbon dioxide, thereby providing near-zero greenhouse gas emissions.