Canada adopts Clean Coal

Feb 03 2009...: Canada's Conservative government released a federal budget last week that would kill off the country's main program for developing renewables and channel most of the money from a new "Green Infrastructure Fund" into carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, or so-called "clean" coal. The new fund, worth a modest $1 billion over five years, includes $150 million for research and $850 million for the development and demonstration of "promising" technologies. Most of that sum, however, is pork money that will go into a chancy project in Saskatchewan that seeks to retrofit an existing coal plant with carbon capture technology, the Toronto Star reports. The plant will remove a small fraction of CO2 from the facility and eat up 25 percent of the energy produced by the generating unit to do it. Meaning: More coal will have to be burned to get the same wattage out.Looks like it's business as usual in Ottawa.