Bluefield Daily Telegraph
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The findings of new report from the Obama administration’s Interagency Task Force on Carbon Capture and Storage is an interesting about-face when it comes to clean coal technology.
The task force report released Thursday concludes there are no insurmountable barriers to the deployment of carbon capture and storage techniques deemed critical toward the development of new clean coal technologies — although it does emphasize the risks associated with the experimental process of storing carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants and other sources underground in an attempt to reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions the administration claims is contributing to global warming.
The findings of the report were welcomed by both U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va.
“The CCS Task Force report confirms that there is an urgent need for CCS technology to reduce emissions, secure coal’s future, and boost West Virginia’s economy,” Rockefeller said, following the release of the report. “There is much work to be done to fully deploy this important technology. In addition to the $3.4 billion that we included in the Recovery Act, I have bipartisan legislation under consideration in Congress that will move CCS forward in a comprehensive and effective way.”
Democrats were forced to temporarily shelve their controversial climate change, or cap-and-trade, legislation last month after they couldn’t find enough Republicans to support it. Republicans have labeled the legislation a job killer and a national energy tax.
If passed, the legislation would most certainly be a job killer for the coalfields of southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia. It could also cause energy bills to spike even further — thus creating an even greater hardship on area residents already faced with a barrage of public utility rate increases.
According to Rockefeller, West Virginia is already leading the way in terms of carbon capture and storage techniques with American Electric Power’s Mountaineer Plant, which according to Rockefeller is the only coal-fired power plant in the world that is capturing carbon dioxide and storing it safely underground on-site.
Rockefeller joined Sen. George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio, in July in introducing the Carbon Capture and Storage Deployment Act of 2010.
This bipartisan legislation promotes research and creates incentives to develop and deploy full scale CCS technologies while creating new bridges to cover the gap between research and development and commercial adoption of the new technologies.
Rockefeller believes the new report is evidence that the CCS technology can play a role in reducing domestic greenhouse gas emissions while preserving the use of coal and other abundant domestic fossil energy resources.
According to Rahall, the report concludes there are no insurmountable barriers to the deployment of the technology.
“Coal remains an affordable, abundant source of energy for the American people, and critical to our national security,” Rahall said. “We must move ahead quickly with the full funding and federal support necessary to secure the large-scale demonstrations and rapid deployment of these technologies. This effort must not be delayed or held hostage in order to advance a national regime on carbon emissions.”
While we remain deeply concerned about the position the Obama administration has taken on coal in recent months, we are encouraged by the findings of the Interagency Task Force on Carbon Capture and Storage. The task force was created by President Barack Obama in February, so it will be interesting to see if the president is willing to take action and implement the findings of this report.
We believe it is important to proceed with the development of new clean coal technologies.
The task force report is another small step in the right direction when it comes to ending this senseless attack on coal.
