In 2017, the China Development and Reform Commission issued the Northern China Winter Clean Heating Plan. It mandated that, by the end of 2021, clean combustion of coal in thermal power plants would be used to provide 8 billion square meters of heating area. Estimates say this will account for nearly 40 percent of the total clean-heating area in northern China in 2021.

Supplementing the use of coal with biomass — a woody or energy crop — has become desirable in the production of electricity for a number of reasons.

Is it possible to reach twice the fuel-to-electricity efficiency of today’s conventional coal plants? MIT scientists think so, and the result would be a 50 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions for a given amount of power produced.

A promising new technology for economically capturing 90% of the carbon dioxide from plant.