While present interest in coal-fired power generation is centred on the developing countries, with new natural-gas-fired power stations predominating in the developed world, in the long term coal will return to being the fuel of choice for power generation for much of the world. To minimise the global impact of coal use it is essential, therefore, that coal technologies are developed that are efficient, clean and economically attractive. Techno-economic analyses of the options for coal are presented together with a strategic overview of potential lines of development. The broad conclusions are that new coal plant will not be truly competitive with natural gas until the price of gas increases to about 3.3 EURO/GJ, compared with a coal price of 1.3 EURO/GJ. Present state-of-the-art pulverised coal-fired plant is close to its optimum techno-economic performance and further improvements depend on the development of cost-effective super-alloys. However, there are good opportunities to increase the efficiency of coal use to greater than 50% (LHV basis) using gasification-based power generation cycles. Unless credit is given for the much lower emissions provided by these cycles, the pulverised coal and pressurised fluidised bed combustion will remain the most economic options.