Although development is well under way on various CO2 sequestration technologies they are still some years away from being commercially viable. However, there are existing technologies that already allow significant reductions in CO2 emissions via improvements to generating efficiency for either new build plants or existing plants. Doosan Babcock is amongst the leaders in this field. 

Doosan Babcock's Once Through Supercritical (OTSC) boiler technology is one such technology. It can currently achieve efficiencies of 44%, compared with the 36-38% efficiency typical of the older natural circulation type of boilers, resulting in an immediate 20% reduction in CO2 emissions. A new development is Doosan Babcock's Posiflow™ furnace arrangement which can be retrofitted to existing subcritical Natural Circulation boilers to allow supercritical steam conditions to be achieved. This increases the cycle efficiency and as a result achieves significant CO2 savings.

Another option that results in additional CO2 savings is to co-fire CO2 neutral biomass. This is achieved by pre-blending 5 to 10% biomass with the coal and by direct injection of a further 10% of biomass. In this way CO2 savings of 15 to 20% are possible.