Workshops on Emerging Energy Technologies and Clean Coal Technolgies on December 10, 2009.

Energy is considered to be the back bone of present civilisation which is mainly fulfilled by renewable and non-renewable resources. The society is concerned about global warming caused by the reckless use of fossil fuels. Hence, efforts have been made to reduce or eliminate the impact by green house gases, by developing clean technologies.

A term used to describe technologies being developed that aim to reduce the environmental impact of coal energy generation. Historically, the primary focus was on sulphur dioxide but more recent focus has been on carbon dioxide, due to its impact on global warming. These technologies include chemically washing minerals and impurities from the coal, gasification or gasification combined with power generation(e.g. IGCC), efficient treatment of the flue gases, storage technologies to capture the carbondioxide from the flue gas and dewatering lower rank coals(brown coals) to improve the calorific value.

Different types of new energy technologies are emerging and getting more and more sophisticated to tackle the problems due to green house gas emissions. These include use of conventional energy resources with improved efficiency and renewable energy conversion. Amongst renewable energy conversion, photovoltaic is considered as the key player for the modularity.