Prove It Can Be Done

We have the engineers, the expertise and the desire.
And after 100 years of mining and transporting coal out of the region, we should become the home of a demonstration center showing how carbon dioxide can be stored instead of released into the atmosphere.
Just such a project is proposed for Dominion Power’s controversial coal-fire power plant under construction in Wise County, Va. The center would be one of the first of its kind to remove carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired smokestack emissions, eliminating 1,500 tons of carbon dioxide from the plant’s emissions each day. The carbon dioxide would be converted to a gas and injected into thin coal seams up to 25 miles underground.
The Virginia Tech Center for Coal and Energy Research and Dominion Power announced the plans Tuesday to establish the $580 million coal sequestration demonstration center at the company’s Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center. The groups also applied for federal stimulus money to offset as much as half that cost.
Grumblers will call this pork, but they don’t understand where their electricity comes from now and where it is likely to come from in the future. Coal generates half the electricity in the United States. In the Southeastern U.S., it is the overwhelming fuel choice. But fossil fuels create greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide. That’s the rub about one of our nation’s most plentiful resources; we have a nearly endless supply of coal and an electricity system based on burning it. But we must do it more cleanly to reduce resulting greenhouse gases.
Capturing and sequestering the carbon dioxide produced at power plants is key.
U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher included massive funding for this technology in the energy and security bill that passed the House of Representatives earlier this year. It includes $1 billion a year, for 10 years, to test carbon sequestration technology and $100 billion to $150 billion to deploy that technology at existing power plants. These are staggering amounts, but consider that American Electric Power is the largest coal buyer in the Western hemisphere. And AEP and Duke Energy, which provides electricity to millions, believe these measures are vital to maintaining affordable electricity into the future. Opponents of the legislation, who claim skyrocketing electricity costs will result, cannot fathom the ensuing costs if coal is legislated out of existence.
The local power plant, housed in Boucher’s district, should be one of the carbon sequestration sites. The plant has been controversial, but we support and insist that it become the cleanest-burning coal plant in America.
There are benefits: The demonstration project would add an additional 36 full-time jobs to the 80 jobs created by the power plant. It also would produce substantial amounts of coal-bed methane, a type of natural gas that is an energy source.
Our region is built on the sweat and sacrifice of thousands of workers who mine, transport and sell coal from our mountains. We urge approval of the application so this plant becomes a clean site where others will come to learn the technology of the future.