West Virginia sorely needs "clean coal" technology breakthroughs to let the state's mammoth energy reserves be burned without harmful pollution — but, so far, prospects keep evaporating.
American Electric Power originally planned a $1.2 billion "integrated gasification combined cycle" generating plant in Mason County alongside its Mountaineer coal-fired plant. But the estimated cost soared past $2 billion, perhaps heading toward $3 billion. Customers in West Virginia and Virginia would be forced to pay the tab.
Six weeks ago, Virginia regulators vetoed the project, saying the skyrocketing cost "represents an extraordinary risk that we cannot allow the ratepayers of Virginia ... to assume." As a result, plans are in limbo.
The IGCC plant would have turned coal into gas, then burned the gas to drive turbines. The worst pollutant — carbon dioxide, chief suspect as a "greenhouse gas" responsible for global warming — wouldn't have been captured.
At the adjoining Mountaineer Plant, AEP spent $533 million for scrubbers to remove 98 percent of sulfur dioxide fumes, the chief cause of acid rain, and is paying $70 million more for one of the world's first "sequestration" operations. Carbon dioxide will be captured from smokestacks, compressed into liquid, then pumped 8,000 feet underground for storage in porous rock.
However, as reporter Ken Ward Jr. explained, the latter project is only a pilot test. The plant spews 9.3 million tons of CO2 annually, and just 110,000 tons will be sequestered. That's about 1 percent "clean coal," so far.Meanwhile, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded last year that sequestration is unproven and perhaps decades away from producing tangible benefits. The IPCC, a network of 2,000 international scientists, shared last year's Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
As we said, West Virginia anxiously waits for scientists to devise methods to remove coal's hurtful side-effects.
A start-up Huntington firm, American Algae Growers Corp., wants to use waste CO2 from power plants to grow huge vats of algae, which can be converted into biodiesel fuel, ethanol, fertilizing compost and other commodities, even food.
And don't forget that "clean coal" also means cleaning up ravages, pollution and hazards in regions where mining occurs. Therefore, enforcement of federal and state safeguards must never become lax.
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