China, US to cooperate in developing ‘clean coal’ technologies to help combat climate change

Officials from China and the United States have taken a major step towards an agreement to advance “clean coal” technologies that claim to reduce the fuel’s contribution to climate change — and could offer a potential lifeline for an industry that has seen its fortunes fade.

The agreement between the US Department of Energy and China’s National Energy Administration allows the two nations to share their results as they refine technologies to capture the greenhouse gases produced from burning coal, said Christopher Smith, the energy department’s assistant secretary for fossil energy.

Terms of the deal were finalised late on Tuesday. Officials said it would be signed at a later date.

Smith spoke after he and other senior officials from President Barack Obama’s administration met with representatives of China’s National Energy Administration during an industry forum in Billings, Montana.

The discussions took place near one of the largest coal reserves in the world, the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming, where massive strip mines produce roughly 40 per cent of the coal burned in the US.

But clean-coal technologies are expensive and efforts to develop them for commercial use have struggled to gain traction in the US.