Burning coal is the dirtiest, most old-fashioned way to produce electricity in the energy industry today. However, in the coming years many governments and energy companies are hoping to reinvent coal as a cleaner, more modern form of energy in the coming years, as they try to reconcile energy security with the need to halt climate change. Coal is plentiful and, despite the surge in coal prices this year, still relatively cheap compared with gas and oil. This means that developing countries such as China and India are burning increasing amounts of coal to fuel their rapid economic growth, while developed countries in North America and western Europe are turning to coal as a way to reduce their dependence on foreign gas imports. But burning coal to produce electricity is less efficient than burning gas and produces significantly more carbon dioxide, as well as sulphur dioxide - the cause of acid rain. The rising awareness of climate change has made coal the bete noire of many politicians and environmentalists, eclipsing even nuclear power in terms of controversy. Activists from Greenpeace were in court in the UK this month after painting slogans on the chimney of the Kingsnorth coal-fired power station in Kent, part of a protest against plans for a coal plant on the site. Eon, the German energy company that owns Kingsnorth, says that the new plant could be a flagship for a new generation of "clean coal" technology. This would involve the carbon dioxide emitted by the plant being captured, compressed and stored underground, most likely in depleted North Sea gas fields. But Greenpeace argues that there is no guarantee that Eon will ever fit this carbon capture and storage (CCS) equipment, as the technology is still in its infancy. Proponents of CCS claim it could cut the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by coal-fired plants by 90 per cent. As yet it is commercially unproven but, if it is found to work and be economically viable, CCS could change the face of the energy industry. The expansion of nuclear power and renewable energy planned in many countries may be put on hold if it was possible to keep burning coal without contributing to global warming. Lord Oxburgh, former chairman of Shell, says clean coal technology is the world's best hope for tackling climate change, and predicts that the CCS sector will grow to become a $1,000bn industry and as big as the oil industry is today. This is why there are such great expectations for the first CCS demonstration plants being planned and built around the world. The UK aims to be at the forefront of the push for clean coal, and the government has pledged to part-fund a demonstration plant based on post-combustion carbon capture technology. This means that the carbon is separated from the flue gas of a power station after the coal has been burnt, rather than before, as in integrated gasification combined cycle technology. The UK government argues that post-combustion technology is valuable as it can be retro-fitted to existing coal-fired power plants and will have widespread applications in China and other coal-dependent economies. But the UK CCS funding scheme will not pick a winning project until next year, and it seems Germany is making rapid progress with its own clean coal projects. Earlier this month Swedish energy company Vattenfall opened a 30MW pilot CCS plant in Schwarze Pumpe in eastern Germany. On the site of an existing lignite-fired power station, the pilot plant will run for at least three years to determine whether Vattenfall's chosen method of "oxyfuel firing" is effective. This involves the burning of coal in pure oxygen to produce concentrated carbon dioxide, which is easier to compress into a liquid. Vattenfall has spent