Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Clean coal technology, involving trapping carbon in waste gases from coal-fired power plants and disposing it underground, may not be commercially viable until 2025, CLP Holdings Ltd.'s Australian unit said.

Generators such as CLP's TRUenergy Pty. unit that use brown coal, or lignite, as a fuel, need to invest in other technologies to help reduce gases blamed for global warming, Richard McIndoe, managing director of the Melbourne-based company said today at a conference in Melbourne.

Companies around the world are looking for ways to curb emissions of carbon dioxide to meet standards imposed by governments trying to slow climate change. Brown coal has a higher moisture content than black coal, making it a more polluting fuel. Technologies to dry brown coal before using it to generate power and to improve boiler technology are more advanced than so-called clean coal, McIndoe said.

``We're not going to wait for one end-to-end solution,'' McIndoe said at the Auswind 2007 wind energy conference in Melbourne. ``We can start implementing the coal-drying technology now, we can look at improving boiler capabilities to improve efficiency over the next five to 10 years.''

TRUenergy owns the 1,480-megawatt Yallourn brown coal-fired power plant in Australia's Victoria state, which emits about 14 million metric tons a year of carbon dioxide. The company has a target to cut carbon emissions by 35 percent of 1990 levels by 2035, and by 60 percent by 2050.

Roaring 40s

TRUenergy, which owns a 50 percent stake in the Roaring 40s Renewable Energy Pty. wind energy unit, intends to invest in other renewable energy technologies to help meet the emissions targets, McIndoe said. It's also building a natural gas-fired power plant in New South Wales state.

Clean coal, also known as carbon capture and storage, won't contribute ``substantially'' to reducing emissions from power generation before 2020, said Steve Sawyer, secretary general of the Brussels-based Global Wind Energy Council. The first commercial plant, a 500-megawatt unit planned by RWE AG, is due to start up by 2014, he said.

Australia, which uses coal for about 85 percent of its electricity generation, in May reported a 1.3 percent annual increase in greenhouse gas emissions from power generation and transport in 2005. Prime Minister John Howard last month set a target for an additional 30,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity, or about 15 percent of supplies, to come from low-polluting sources, including clean coal power plants, by 2020.

BHP, Rio

Clean coal plants probably won't contribute at all to Australia's clean energy target by 2020, Dominique La Fontaine, chief executive officer of the Clean Energy Council, a Melbourne- based industry lobby group, said in an interview. Wind energy, solar power, co-generation and biomass-fueled plants will probably make the biggest contributions, she said.

The estimated cost of a U.S. government- and industry-funded project to demonstrate a coal-fueled power plant that traps carbon-dioxide emissions has risen 85 percent in three years to $1.76 billion, the U.S. Department of Energy said in May. The FutureGen project is backed by coal companies including Consol Energy Inc., Peabody Energy Corp., Kennecott Energy & Coal Co. and BHP Billiton Ltd.

BP Plc, Rio Tinto Group and Anglo American Plc are involved in potential clean coal ventures in Australia.

There's a growing realization among utility industry leaders worldwide that so-called clean coal may not be able to address rising emissions from power generation for at least the next decade, said Derek Kidley, energy and utilities leader for the Asia-Pacific region at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC. The professional services company's latest survey of energy utility executives showed a decline in expectations the technology will contribute within the next five to 10 years, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Macdonald-Smith through the Sydney newsroom at 1268 or amacdonaldsm@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 9, 2007 03:52 EDT