Utilities across Europe are looking for greener ways of generating power while retaining coal as a baseload fuel. The challenge has grown over the past 18 months or so as coal has become the fossil fuel of choice for electricity firms in many of the region's biggest power markets, including Germany, as it is much cheaper than natural gas (WGI Aug.15'12). While renewables can help cut emissions, the intermitten-cy of wind and solar power means they generally can't be used for baseload generation. That's why governments, as well as utilities, are looking to biomass - biological material derived from living, or recently living, organisms - as a low carbon and affordable alternative or adjunct to coal.
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