Repowering coal plants for a sustainable future

How the legacy machinery at coal power plants could be brought back to life using advanced heat sources

Nuclear Future

Nuclear Future

Kirsty Gogan and Eric Ingersoll, with thanks also to Felicity McKane, Bryden Wood and Justin Aborn, TerraPraxis

Vol 18 #5 September / October 2022

To avoid catastrophic climate impacts to people and our planet we must apply our most innovative strategies to the toughest-to-decarbonise parts of the economy, which include aviation, shipping and the single largest emitter of carbon emissions, coal-fired power plants. Coal’s virtues, ironically, make it a historically neglected area of the climate challenge and now the single biggest problem we face – but flip it around and tackling coal-fired generation could present the single biggest decarbonization opportunity on the planet.

To avoid catastrophic climate impacts to people and our planet we must apply our most innovative strategies to the toughest-to-decarbonise parts of the economy, which include aviation, shipping and the single largest emitter of carbon emissions, coal-fired power plants. Coal’s virtues, ironically, make it a historically neglected area of the climate challenge and now the single biggest problem we face – but flip it around and tackling coal-fired generation could present the single biggest decarbonization opportunity on the planet.

The REOWER Initiative, led by Terra Praxis with partners, Bryden Wood, MIT, Microsoft and University at Buffalo, is developing transformative design and construction solutions aimed at retrofitting existing coal-fired power plants with new advanced (reactor) heat sources, while still retaining the substantial societal and economic value of the existing power plant infrastructure.

The process focuses on efficiency and cost effectiveness as the means to overcome deployment barriers and replace coal with nuclear power sources, creating a viable path to sustainable, reliable energy for those economies still reliant on coal-fired power.

Learn more about REPOWER »

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