China Huaneng Group yesterday signed an agreement with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency, to develop clean coal power generation, and carbon capturing and storage technologies.

The collaboration includes capturing power plants' flue gases, coal gasification, coal gas purification and some other power generation technologies.

The agreement will also see a post-combustion capture pilot project at Huaneng Beijing thermal power plant. Post-combustion capture is a process that traps carbon dioxide (CO2) from flue gases of power plants. It's a key technology that can potentially reduce CO2 emissions from existing and future coal-fired power plants by more than 85 percent, CSIRO website says.

Low-emission energy generation is CSIRO's key research area, the organization's chief executive, Geoff Garrett, said.

"CSIRO has developed a significant energy research program with the objective of significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector while increasing efficiency and developing new technologies for our future energy mix."

The organization has been working on collaborative projects with China for more than 30 years and in areas as diverse as minerals and mining technology, plantation forestry, environmental sustainability and crop science.

Garrett said CSIRO is delighted to continue the process to help its partner Huaneng address the global issue of greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector.