The Wire

It’s not often that you hear coal-fired power and environmental benefits mentioned in the same sentence. But some new research coming out of the University of Queensland might change that. As part of his PhD thesis, Cameron Wearing has been researching how a byproduct from the coal burned in power generation can be used to reduce soil salinity. The newly reclaimed land can then be used to plant trees to be used as carbon sinks. Because of this capacity to offset carbon emissions, the research has been funded by Japan’s Central Research Institute of the Electric Power Industry and a Japanese power company. But Greenpeace climate campaigner Gareth Walton, expresses concerns that this may distract from the deeper environmental problems with coal power.

University of Queensland
Greenpeace