Australia's coal industry will only stay competitive if it can capture and store the carbon dioxide it produces within 10 years, a conference in Brisbane has heard.
Professor Victor Rudolph, a clean coal researcher at the University of Queensland, told the Coal Tech 2008 conference the technology for clean coal was feasible, but its introduction was taking too long.
"Carbon capture and storage has to be done much more quickly than people are talking about at the moment," Prof Rudolph said.
"The timeline one is seeing is sort of five years for research and five years to do demonstration and then start implementing at the end of 10 years.
"I think it's got to be done and dusted in 10 years.
"If it's not done in that sort of timeframe, or at least gone a long way, (coal) is going to be overtaken, people will vote with their feet, and there are going to be other solutions."
Prof Rudolph said a portfolio of alternatives would instead provide electricity generation - including wind, tidal, geothermal and solar.
"The big one in my view is going to be solar photovoltaics," he said.
"The prices of solar photovoltaics is coming down.
"The price of everything else is going up.
"Sooner or later those cost curves are going to cross, and the word is they've crossed already."
Prof Rudolph told AAP the coal industry had its head in the sand when it came to the by-product of its operations.
"They're not pulling their weight, and their industry might go to hell in a handbasket as a result," he said.
But, he said, he believed coal did have a longer-term future.
"Coal is such a good resource in terms of embodied chemical energy, we'd be crazy to give it up, absolutely crazy," he said.
"The reason it's causing problems for us is it's just so good. Everybody uses coal."
Experts from around the world and representatives from Australia's biggest mining companies met at the conference.
A small group of protesters from Brisbane's Climate Emergency Network voiced their opposition to the coal industry outside.