A WEEK before the government publishes its long-awaited energy white paper, two of the consortium looking to develop clean coal technology have announced that they will move forward with their plans. The first to jump was Scottish Power, which said it was moving to the final feasibility study of a scheme to revamp Longannet.

A WEEK before the government publishes its long-awaited energy white paper, two of the consortium looking to develop clean coal technology have announced that they will move forward with their plans.

The first to jump was Scottish Power, which said it was moving to the final feasibility study of a scheme to revamp Longannet.

The plans will see the Fife power station reduce its CO2 emissions by 20% in the first instance with the installation of new super-critical boilers.

It is hoped that the project will be complete by 2012, when the company, together with partners British Gas will have carbon-capture technology up and running.

This will see emissions from Longannet fall by as much as 90%, and should go some way to silencing critics from environment protection groups.

BP got in on the act when it announced that, in collaboration with mining group Rio Tinto, a company to be named Hydrogen Energy would be set up to advance BP's plans to build hydrogen power plants at Peterhead and Carson, California.

Both announcements fall short of committing to the construction of full-scale power plants. This is in part due to the imminent unveiling of the energy white paper. It has faced numerous delays and the industry had become frustrated by the wait.

The expectation is that the government will announce a competition between various energy generators to devise carbon-capture power plants. The winning companies would receive government backing for the final power plant, and we can now expect to see all parties jockeying for position.

The European Union has said it wants all coal-fired plants to be fitted with carbon capture and storage technology from 2020 to cut the level of greenhouse gas emissions. As a first step towards this, it would like to see all plants designed to be capture-ready by 2010. In this regard Scottish Power, BP and their partners are on-message. The EU wants to see around a dozen full-scale plants up and running across Europe by 2015, allowing five years of operation before the 2020 deadline.

The developments come on the day it was revealed that UK businesses increased greenhouse gas emissions by 3.6% in 2006. The worst offenders power generators, who were forced to buy extra emissions as a result. Any attempts to divert attention away from this unwelcome news may be forgiven in the hope that the companies are now on track to put things right.