About 10-15 years ago, Germany had a globally leading position in developing CO₂ free coal combustion systems. In total three different technologies were investigated and scaled up into a size of some 10 MW. In the power station of Schwarze Pumpe close to Cottbus a system with 30 MW was built up to test the Oxy Fuel process. In this system the coal was burned with pure oxygen, so the exhaust gases consists nearly completely of CO₂, which can be compressed and liquidized. At that time the German chemical industry was not prepared to absorb huge amount of CO₂ for any type of utilisation. So is was the plan, first to store the liquidized CO₂ into caverns. With increasing fears of the population in the storage area, German government decided to stop these technologies. All the prototype installations were dismantled and Germany lost its leading position in this technology.