This could be a game changer for coal...

It's possible that the U.S., China, Russia and India won't have to scrap their enormous coal reserves because of underground emission storage technology (although "pipe it into the ground" doesn't sound all that technically innovative to me ;-)

Of course, we'll all eventually have to give up coal since it is a finite resource and is extremely dangerous to mine. Nevertheless, in the short term (say 5-10 years) I fully acknowledge the massive energy shortages currently facing the world. So anything that allows developing economies to burn coal, with minimal added CO2 emissions (not to mention sulfur and other nasty pollutants) sounds great!


It appears we won't know the full answer for another 3 years (that's how long this pilot program will take), but according to the NYTimes article, India fully expects to tap its coal reserves given that it currently produce less CO2 emissions than either the US, China, Japan, or Russia yet the country makes up 17% of the world's population (hard to argue with that logic).

Stock ideas: Long...
WLT (they do have credit exposure through their lending business though..WTF?)
ANR
JRCC
ACI
SSL

Position: None in any of the names...but thinking about it.