Is this an opportunity for any of our coal permits/prospects? The government seems willing to throw dollars to miners willing to go with clean coal...

The Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan have strong interests in developing cleaner coal technologies since they both sit on major coal and tar-sands oil deposits.

The Alberta government has allocated $2 billion in funds for a climate action plan. The plan has three prongs: Implementing carbon capture and storage, greening energy production, and conserving and using energy efficiently. Of course, given province’s massive coal and tar-sands resources, carbon capture and storage will likely take the lion’s share.

Last week, the Canadian utility company Epcor applied to the Alberta government for financing support for a “clean coal” power plant that would use Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) technology. IGCC would take coal and turn it into a hydrogen-rich gas, which would then have the pollutants removed from it before being burned to generate electricity.

Along the same vein, the Saskatchewan government recently announced that it would be partnering with Royal Dutch Shell and the University of Regina to create an International Performance Assessment Centre for Geological Storage of CO2. The center’s goal will be to conduct research on clean coal and carbon capture and storage.