Stakeholders in the coal industry and the EU Commission on 10 October agreed on the need to speed up the development and commercial exploitation of clean coal technology "as soon as possible".
The statement came at the conclusion of the second plenary meeting of the Fossil Fuels Forum organised in Berlin under the auspices of the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies can be applied to both oil and coal-fired power plants. It allows for drastic reductions in CO2 emissions blamed for global warming.
The forum agreed that further EU policies were needed to "facilitate the speedy commercial demonstration" of CCS technologies.
"By 2015, joint efforts of the industry and European administrations need to result in a number of large-scale demonstration projects undertaken in Europe," state the forum's final conclusions.
It adds: "Even before that (e.g. by 2010), … all newly-built coal-fired power plants should anticipate the arrival of new technologies and be built as 'capture-ready', allowing for retrofitting with CCS at later stages".
CCS is not expected to become commercially feasible before 2020.
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