Graham Fagence of Hitachi, said: “China and India are still steaming ahead with new projects, and the US and Germany are also building a lot.”
In Germany, power is mostly generated by burning coal, Germany is currently replacing heavily polluting and outdated facilities with the facilities burning coal more cleanly, the process is also implemented in the US. But in the expanding economies like India and China, coal is the cheapest way to generate electricity.
Fagence further added: “It is simply most convenient for them to build coal plants. The new units are much more efficient, so the carbon-dioxide emissions are significantly lower. They basically use less coal to produce the same amount of energy.”
Damian Goral from US engineering firm Foster Wheeler, said: “We are making boilers for both energy and other industries and actually, while in some sectors we witness delays, interest from the utilities remains high.”
Polish utilities, in order to reach EU environment guidelines and reduce carbon emissions, are planning to adapt their power stations to be fueled not only with coal but also with biomass.
Foster Wheeler has supplied a boiler to 460MW power facility in Lagisza, Poland, where both coal and biomass can be used as fuel to generate power.
