The World Coal Association says that 21st century high efficiency, low emission (HELE) coal technologies have huge potential. “It is well known by now that a one percentage point increase in efficiency at a coal plant results in a 2-3 percentage point decrease in CO2 emissions. Less widely known is that the average efficiency of the global coal fleet currently stands at 33%. Off-the-shelf technologies for supercritical and ultra-supercritical coal have about 40% efficiency or higher, while more advanced technologies, expected to become available in the near future, will approach 50% efficiency. The IEA estimates that increasing the average efficiency of the global coal fleet up to 40% would save around 2 gigatonnes of CO2 annually – roughly equivalent to India’s total annual emissions.

“Taken in the context of other climate policies, the potential impact of improving the efficiency of the global coal fleet is significant. The Economist recently published a graphic showing the impact various policies or events have had on global CO2 emissions. If a global initiative was in place to increase the average efficiency of the global coal fleet to the level of off-the-shelf technology, its 2 gigatonnes of savings would place it fourth on this list of 20 activities. It would be more than three times more effective in reducing CO2 emissions than the global deployment of all non-hydro renewable energies combined.