By Mannix Porterfield
Clean coal technology is the industry’s salvation, and industry leaders need to get on board with a pioneer project in New Haven aimed at capturing carbon dioxide rather than engage in a diatribe over delayed mining permits, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., suggested Friday.
Rockefeller appeared in a telephone news conference call with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Gov. Joe Manchin and Mike Morris, chief executive officer of American Electric Power, to discuss a $334 million outlay in federal stimulus money for clean coal experiment at the firm’s New Haven plant.
The idea is to capture up to 90 percent of the carbon emissions and sequester them 1.5 miles beneath the earth in a $1 billion federal plan that also embraces similar projects in Mobile, Ala., and Midland-Odessa, Texas.
Just a day earlier, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., issued a stinging rebuke of the coal industry, saying it was orchestrating a campaign of fear among workers over the holdup of 23 mining permits in West Virginia by the Environmental Protection Agency. Byrd also implied mountaintop mining has a diminishing cadre of supporters on Capitol Hill.
Rockefeller termed the speech by Byrd as both “blunt” and “very good.”
“He didn’t mince words,” he said.
Rockefeller indicated his colleague’s remarks need to be put in perspective since the news conference was about helping coal survive the intrusion of natural gas and the EPA.
“Now if you just don’t want to be a participant in that,” he said of the New Haven clean coal project, “then you’re going to see the EPA come in, you’ll see natural gas come in, you’re going to see Wall Street even farther more distant, funding for power plants, funding for coal operations are going to decline,” he said.
“There have been some pretty inflammatory comments from the coal industry. Not all of it, just a few people. That is scaring the heck out of a lot of people in southern West Virginia and making it impossible for them to consider what it is we’re doing here today and the possibility of what we can do tomorrow and the next day to secure the future of coal. That’s the whole point of this. We can secure the future of coal. This country cannot operate without coal.”
Rockefeller pointed out he and four other committee chairs have been named by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to write a climate bill, but for now, health care has top priority and it might not get done soon.
At any rate, he said, West Virginia needs to gear itself “psychologically as a strong coal tradition state” to take advantage of the clean technology experiment in New Haven.
“We’ve got to stop the denunciation, the scare tactics and turn people to understanding what might be in something called a climate bill,” the senator said. “The word ‘cap-and-trade’ is a very bad word in West Virginia.”
Yet, he told The Register-Herald, few either on Capitol Hill or in this state could supply “a very good explanation” of its intent.
“We can’t be afraid of anything,” he said. “If cap-and-trade doesn’t work for West Virginia, then it won’t have my support. This is an opportunity. This is about being able to save our future for coal. I just don’t know what could be more important.”
Rockefeller said he believes cap-and-trade can work for the good of West Virginia, depending on how the proposal is written.
“I don’t know enough about it yet,” he said. “Neither do most other people around here. If a bill doesn’t help West Virginia, then it won’t have my support.”
One reporter asked Chu if the New Haven funding was a means of blunting criticism of the Obama administration over the delay in mine permits, and the secretary replied, “We’re not trying to dismantle anyone’s coal industry, especially in West Virginia.”
Chu earlier had pointed out coal satisfies more than half of the nation’s energy demands.
“Coal is an abundant energy resource in the United States,” the secretary said. “America will not turn its back on coal.”
— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com
