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The coal industry was recently criticised for running a coal and climate event alongside UN emissions negotiations in Poland. The Warsaw Communiqué emphasised 'high-efficiency' coal power technologies as a way for the sector to contribute to climate change mitigation, but without carbon capture, are they enough?

The US Environmental Protection Agency has been accused of 'waging a war' on coal after announcing proposals to reduce CO2 emitted by coal-fired power plants. Industry has called the proposals "extreme" and "ill-advised" and it is poised for a fight. But should the EPA be the coal industry's only concern?

Germany has witnessed a surge in renewable technology ever since the decision in 2011 to do away with nuclear power. Critics however, doubt the country will be able to meet ambitious C02 unless coal can be cut out of the equation.

In reality, there is no such thing as "clean" coal in America today.

Despite being touted as the best way to clean up dirty fossil fuels, commercial deployment of carbon capture storage (CCS) in the power industry has been near non-existent. Now, for the first time ever, a coal-fired power plant is being retrofitted with CCS.

Labelled as the largest, cleanest and most efficient coal-fired power station in the UK, the 4,000MW Drax plant supplies around 7% of the UK's electricity needs.

The project uses an improved technology to extract energy from rock and fluids in the Earth's crust more efficiently. The technology, referred to as a supercritical binary geothermal cycle, is estimated to be more efficient than traditional geothermal binary systems, allowing lower-temperature geothermal resources to be used for power generation. Unlike coal-fired and natural gas-fired power generation plants, geothermal plants produce virtually no greenhouse gas emissions.

Biomass power is poised to occupy a significant share in the global renewable energy mix, as new technologies reach commercial deployment and some coal- fired plants, such as Drax power station in the UK, are converted.

Rodenhuize power station is an 180MW biomass-fuelled plant located in Ghent, Belgium. The plant was converted from a coal-fired unit called Rodenhuize 4 into a 100% biomass unit.

Alstom recently announced it was installing a new flue gas corrosion protection system at the Weiher coal power plant in Germany to protect its boiler evaporator walls against corrosion by reduced oxygen potential. With plants expected to run for decades

With the UK going coal-free for a record-breaking 90 hours over the weekend, energy sources such as solar and onshore wind now play a key role in generating electricity. However, with the urgent need for new energy sources to replace the 60% of the electricity produced worldwide by fossil fuel combustion, it has become necessary to look further afield to alternative energy sources.

India's largest power utility NTPC has plans to use biomass to co-fire all its coal-based power plants. The decision is a bold move that will reduce the company's overall carbon emissions, but what challenges might it face during implementation and how will the change impact India's overall energy mix? Heidi Vella investigates