Power plants are not required to capture their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, but they are working hard on the technology anyway.

Alstom's Carbon Capture Pilot Project Carbon Capture at work

The pilot facility at the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant takes about 1 percent of its flue gas for use in the carbon capture demonstration project.

Using a chilled ammonia process developed by Alstom Power Inc., the test project captures 90 percent of the carbon emissions. The demonstration project began in March 2008 and will last for two years.

Later on the Factuality Tour, we'll see this technology in action elsewhere in the country, including one that will come online as the nation's first commercial-grade power plant to capture and sequester its own emissions.

We arrived in this small town near Lake Michigan to visit the power plant that has the lowest emission rate of any coal-based electricity plant in Wisconsin: the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant (dubbed P4 by the workers we met), owned by We Energies.

We Energies Pleasant Prairie Power Plant

Since being built about 30 years ago, P4 installed a retrofit system that has resulted in a 90 percent reduction in nitrogen oxide and a 95 percent reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions.

Here at P4, we got a first-hand look at the latest generation of clean coal technology: efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by capturing the carbon as it escapes in the flue gas.