12.3.10

Peabody to invest in Calera

Peabody to invest in Calera

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Coal company Peabody Energy(BTU) is expected to announce its decision to invest in energy start-up company Calera this week, according to the New York Times.

Calera's claim to fame is that is has developed technology converting most of the carbon dioxide emission from a coal or gas-fired power plant into calcium carbonate, which can then be prepared for use in wall or highway construction.

If Calera can replicate this process on a grander scale, companies could ultimately do away with costly carbon-sequestration systems that would need to be built next to these power plants, "and it might actually make the heretofore specious notion of 'clean coal' a possibility," Times' columnist Thomas Friedman writes.

Calera is currently the pet project of Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Oracle's(ORCL) Sun Microsystems, and an avid supporter of clean energy start-up companies, the Times reports.

"If this works," Khosla said, "coal-fired power would become more than 100% clean. Not only would it not emit any CO2, but by producing clean water and cement as a byproduct, it would also be taking all of the CO2 that goes into making those products out of the atmosphere." Peabody stock is up 0.6% at $49.50 in pre-market trading.

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Carden said...

Now this sounds much more viable and intelligent. BUT I do believe we need to work hard to reduce/clean up pollution of our waters and our air and we certainly can do things more efficiently---like applying software and computer technologies to power creation, management and transportation, chemical and solid waste recycling etc. Converting carbon back into usable product is certainly an exciting and interesting opportunity, much better than this ludicrous insanity, enormous misallocation of resources and utter drivel spewed forth about Solar, Wind and Ethanol.

March 25, 2010  

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