France will shut down about half its coal-fired power stations by 2015, replacing them with natural-gas-fired plants, as part of the European Copenhagen agreement to cut carbon emissions 20% by 2020.
Germany’s RWE AG, the single largest carbon emitter in Europe, said it won’t build new coal-fired power plants, finding that they are no longer economically feasible. The UK will build no new coal plants without carbon-capture technology.
Vattenfall AB, Scandinavia’s largest utility and one of the first to test CCS technology, has also pioneered adaptations of coal plants, such as this one in Denmark, making them able to run on biomass instead of coal.