Published: November 16, 2009 11:20 pm      

Manchin puts clean coal technology on special call

CHARLESTON — Municipal pensions and the gasoline tax escalator are getting most of the media’s attention, but one key point in Gov. Joe Manchin’s special session agenda this week is aimed at letting coal help achieve the 25 percent renewable energy threshold by 2020.

The last of nine items on the governor’s call is designed to make a definition change, moving from “super critical” to “ultra critical,” and this plays into his Alternative and Renewable Energy Portfolio Act the Legislature enacted this year.

A major thrust of the act means that one-fourth of West Virginia’s energy supply must come from renewables, such as wind, solar, hydro and the like.

By changing the definition and making the emission standards more rigid, says Sen. Mike Green, D-Raleigh, clean coal technology can share the burden of meeting the 25 percent threshold.

“It’s a definition change that is going to make it more stringent as far as the emission standards are concerned,” said Green, chairman of the Senate Energy, Industry and Mining Committee.

“We also amended (the bill) to put natural gas in there. That’s kind of to be our catch-all that lets us meet that 25 percent threshold.”

Senators also had altered the bill to embrace nuclear energy at the urging of Sen. Brooks McCabe, D-Kanawha, after some lengthy debate, but the House eventually removed this source.

In this newest wrinkle on the matter, Manchin is making sure that coal remains a player in the energy portfolio.

“We’re changing the definition where that clean coal technology will be considered a renewable energy,” Green explained.

“Prior to that, clean coal would not have been considered a renewable energy. With an ultra-critical definition, clean coal will meet the definition for a renewable.”

A new plan to rescue financially strapped police and fire pension plans that have pushed some municipal budgets to the brink of bankruptcy has been the primary focus of this long-anticipated special session that dovetails with the November interims meetings.

Another key item is intended to stabilize the built-in escalator in the gasoline tax by adjusting the manner in which it is computed each year, based on the wholesale price of fuel between July and October.

And another item is a resolution honoring Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., as the longest serving member of Congress in American history.

Although Byrd won’t attend, a special ceremony is set for Wednesday in the upper rotunda near a statue of the senator, with a number of speakers lined up to pay tribute to him.

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com