Yesterday we covered a story regarding Chevron Corp building a solar thermal plant in California that will help extract oil from an aging oil field – now it’s coal’s turn to turn fossil fuel into something perhaps a little bit greener.
Abengoa Solar announced today it had inked a deal with Xcel Energy in the US state of Colorado to build a demonstration parabolic trough concentrating solar power (CSP) plant at its Cameo coal-fired power generation facilities. According to Abengoa, the project is the first to integrate an industrial solar installation into a coal-fired plant.
The four megawatt project is expected to be operational by the end of 2009 and aims to prove that the heat produced by the solar farm can increase the efficiency of a coal-fired power plant while also lowering carbon dioxide emissions.
Parabolic trough technology uses collectors that track the sun and concentrate solar radiation onto a heat-absorbing pipe. The heated fluid that circulates through the pipe reaches high temperatures and via a heat exchanger, produces energy that can be used to generate steam.
Hybrids of this nature – fossil fuel incorporating clean, renewable energy technology – have raised the eyebrows of some environmentalists concerned with the oil/coal companies involved seeing this as a “greenwashing” opportunity.
However, these recent developments could also finally herald the big polluters’ awareness and acceptance that their contribution to climate change must be addressed soon in order to avoid worst-case scenario global disaster.. and these technologies may help buy a little time as the world moves towards a clean energy revolution.
