CALGARY — Alberta Premier Ralph Klein believes Ontario's plans to eliminate its coal-fired power plants are "short sighted," and says affordable, clean coal-burning technologies are inevitable.

"I think that coal can be developed to ultra-critical standards where virtually no emissions are expelled," Klein said Monday following a speech to the Coal Association of Canada's annual meeting in Calgary.

"And that we can use this tremendous resource ... to provide power for the oilsands and other industrial needs and domestic needs and still provide very clean-burning coal operations."

Ontario and Alberta are heading in opposite directions over their views of coal as a viable fuel source in the future.

Alberta, which holds massive coal reserves, has recently stepped up the sales pitch that coal should be at the forefront of future energy strategies and that it can be used in a clean and environmental manner.

Meanwhile, Ontario's Liberal government is struggling with a three-year-old election promise that it would close all of its older, polluting coal-fired plants in order to improve air quality in the heavily populated and industrialized south.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's government has already had to push back its target date to close all remaining coal-fired plants by two years to 2009 as the demand for energy continues to grow and new sources of supply from nuclear and natural-gas fired plants have yet to come on stream.

Instead of trying to push coal into the history books, Alberta believes that it will play a major role in the future energy policy of the province, Klein said Monday.

The premier said that he believes the cost of clean coal technology will come down in time.

And he likened the coal industry to northern Alberta's oilsands, where decades worth of technological advances have managed to dramatically lower production costs to the point where it's become an attractive, stable investment.

Helped by sustained, near-record crude prices, nearly every major Canadian energy company and a long list of international players, are now building or expanding in the oilsands, with a list of construction projects totalling upwards of $100 billion dollars over the next 10 to 15 years.

The oilsands industry "found ways to bring the cost of extracting oil down to a very reasonable cost where they're all just making a tremendous amount of money," said Klein.

"So it can happen with the coal industry."

Epcor Utilities Inc., owned by the City of Edmonton, said it would like to have a very low-emission, coal-gasification plant built and operating in Alberta by 2015.

But Epcor senior vice-president David Lewin said Monday that such a plant would cost more than $1 billion to build.

Epcor is currently looking for government funding to do the front-end engineering and design of the plant, and expects a group of companies would likely invest to cover the bulk of the costs.

"Because of the newness of the technology, inherent risks and likely the higher capital costs, it would be a consortium of utilities who would basically invest."

Such coal-gasification technology would enable the capture of carbon dioxide. And in Alberta, the possibility exists that the carbon dioxide could be sent to a pipeline to older oilfields where it is pumped down the wells to bring additional oil to the surface.