Forget the ‘flim-flam’ about alternatives being the answer; noddling donkeys floating off-shore, wind turbines preventing the sheep from kipping, solar panels for the middle-class, heated water from the bowels of the earth. They’re never going to be the answer to our insatiable craving for convenient energy.

We’re all standing on the future – 300 years worth of coal. I’m not talking about thousands of toiling pitmen hacking aways in 2’6” seams or gangs of sweating stokers chucking shovel loads into open furnaces and million of tons of filth being spued into the atmosphere. Clean coal technology is the way to go! Sure, all the ‘green’ stuff can make a contribution but it can only be a junior partner in this endeavour.

Our perception of coal-fired plant has been affected by what they have traditionally pumped out into the environment but the technology now exists to deal with mercury emissions, NOx and SO2 emissions, particulates and ash disposal. The big one for the public however is CO2 and the greenhouse effect; again the technology is being developed to allow coal plants to operate with very low CO2 emissions by, for example, using gas separation filtering. There’s even been a ton of work done on co-combustion by mixing pulverised coal with wood, paper waste, plastic waste, sewage sludge, agro-industrial waste, etc.

I say build clean-coal power stations – the Ruskies can’t turn off the gas tap to freeze us in the Winter, the terrorists won’t be able to do 9/11s into nuclear power plants to poison us all,. Coal is the most abundant, safe, secure and economically viable form of energy we have!

Of course, the concerned middle-class can still go down to B&Q to buy their roof-mounted wind generators and solar panels, deluding themselves that they’re doing their best to ‘save the planet’ – but hey, where was this equipment made? Probably China – a place soon to overtake the Yankies as the World’s biggest polluter.

Of course, the concerned middle-class can still go down to B&Q to buy their roof-mounted wind generators and solar panels, deluding themselves that they're doing their best to 'save the planet' – but hey, where was this equipment made? Probably China – a place soon to overtake the Yankies as the World's biggest polluter.

Then they jet off halfway around the world on a summer holiday and don't realise that their solar panels and roof-mounted generators wont even have made up for the amount of emissions given off by that one return flight. Well, not in their lifetime anyway.

We’re all standing on the future – 300 years worth of coal. I’m not talking about thousands of toiling pitmen hacking aways in 2’6” seams or gangs of sweating stokers chucking shovel loads into open furnaces and million of tons of filth being spued into the atmosphere. Clean coal technology is the way to go! Sure, all the ‘green’ stuff can make a contribution but it can only be a junior partner in this endeavour.

I believe in UCG.