WCA chief executive Milton Catelin and BCA president Fernando Zancan signed a memorandum of understanding in Brazil this week to pursue collaborative work to advance technical, environmental, and strategic research on clean coal technologies.

Catelin said that the technology was critical to meet today’s environmental challenges.

“As the coal industry works to improve access to modern energy, it is critical to develop and utilize technologies to reduce the environmental impacts associated with our energy consumption,” Catelin said.

“Research has shown that if we had used advanced coal technologies between 2000 and 2011 for new coal-fired generating capacity, cumulative emissions of CO2 over that period would have been reduced by almost 2 gigatonnes – this is three times the expected effect of the Kyoto Protocol.”

The MOU will include studies on carbon capture use and storage, coal-to-liquids technologies, technologies to tackle acid mine drainage, tackling waste from coal production and use, and the utilization of coal combustion products.

“This MOU not only highlights the importance of clean coal technologies in the future production of energy, it is an invaluable opportunity to work with BCA to deliver pragmatic solutions that address environmental challenges,” Catelin added.