CO2-free coal?

Germany is planning to build the world's first CO₂-free coal-fired power plant. This isn't quite as oxymoronic as it sounds: while carbon dioxide is an inescapable product of burning coal, that doesn't mean that it has to be emitted into the atmosphere. The plan is therefore to burn the coal so as to produce as pure a stream of CO₂ as possible, then store it in rock formations underground.

There are real concerns about this technology - notably, whether the storage will be sufficiently long to be considered "permanant", or whether its simply a way of shifting pollution forward into the future while retaining profits (in the form of dodged emissions costs) in the present. But we're not going to find out if we don't try, and a 30MW testbed seems to be a good way to learn.