W.Va. pilot project to pump CO2 waste underground begins
Visitors at the AEP Mountaineer Plant watch an electronic demonstration of the Alstom Power carbon-capture process.
Coal was piled high at American Electric Power's Mountaineer Plant in Mason County on Friday. Smoke billowed out of the plant's towering stack.
NEW HAVEN, W.Va. -- Coal was piled high at American Electric Power's Mountaineer Plant in Mason County on Friday. Smoke billowed out of the plant's towering stack.
Inside white tents and a makeshift auditorium, West Virginia political leaders and industry officials celebrated the start of a pilot project they hope will allow that coal to be burned without spewing heat-trapping carbon dioxide out into the air.
"This truly is an historic moment at an historic place," AEP President Michael Morris told several hundred visitors on hand for the kickoff ceremony. "This is really special."
Morris and other AEP officials hope they can capture a small stream of the Mountaineer Plant's carbon dioxide emissions, pump it underground, and store it safely a mile and a half below the Ohio River bottomland just outside the town of New Haven.
If the project works, it could pave the way for larger tests of technology for carbon capture and storage, or CCS -- a process that most energy experts see as the only way for coal to survive limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Gov. Joe Manchin and hundreds of other folks joined Morris for Friday's celebration, which also was attended by dozens of media representatives from around the world.
"Bringing this to West Virginia is something we're very proud of, and it's the right thing to do," Manchin said. "We have produced electricity and energy for this country for decades, and we would like to continue to be part of the solution."
Manchin said coal-fired power can be a "bridge" to a future in which other alternative sources play a much larger role across the world.
However, the latest scientific reviews estimate that CCS isn't likely to "make important contributions" to dealing with climate change until at least 2030. AEP officials believe it might be ready for widespread deployment sooner than that, perhaps by 2020.
At the same time, many climate scientists are seeing signs that the world is warming much faster than they expected, and are urging fast reductions in greenhouse gases to avoid the most serious effects on the planet and human society.
Meanwhile, even strong advocates of CCS say that it faces a long list of hurdles. CCS is expensive. It sucks up a lot of a power plant's energy and takes up tremendous space that might not be available at every site.
Power companies also haven't figured out exactly how to do CCS on the monumental scale needed. Additionally, experts aren't exactly sure if pumping such huge amounts of compressed CO2 underground is really safe.
NEW HAVEN, W.Va. -- Coal was piled high at American Electric Power's Mountaineer Plant in Mason County on Friday. Smoke billowed out of the plant's towering stack.
Inside white tents and a makeshift auditorium, West Virginia political leaders and industry officials celebrated the start of a pilot project they hope will allow that coal to be burned without spewing heat-trapping carbon dioxide out into the air.
"This truly is an historic moment at an historic place," AEP President Michael Morris told several hundred visitors on hand for the kickoff ceremony. "This is really special."
Morris and other AEP officials hope they can capture a small stream of the Mountaineer Plant's carbon dioxide emissions, pump it underground, and store it safely a mile and a half below the Ohio River bottomland just outside the town of New Haven.
If the project works, it could pave the way for larger tests of technology for carbon capture and storage, or CCS -- a process that most energy experts see as the only way for coal to survive limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Gov. Joe Manchin and hundreds of other folks joined Morris for Friday's celebration, which also was attended by dozens of media representatives from around the world.
"Bringing this to West Virginia is something we're very proud of, and it's the right thing to do," Manchin said. "We have produced electricity and energy for this country for decades, and we would like to continue to be part of the solution."
Manchin said coal-fired power can be a "bridge" to a future in which other alternative sources play a much larger role across the world.
However, the latest scientific reviews estimate that CCS isn't likely to "make important contributions" to dealing with climate change until at least 2030. AEP officials believe it might be ready for widespread deployment sooner than that, perhaps by 2020.
At the same time, many climate scientists are seeing signs that the world is warming much faster than they expected, and are urging fast reductions in greenhouse gases to avoid the most serious effects on the planet and human society.
Meanwhile, even strong advocates of CCS say that it faces a long list of hurdles. CCS is expensive. It sucks up a lot of a power plant's energy and takes up tremendous space that might not be available at every site.
Power companies also haven't figured out exactly how to do CCS on the monumental scale needed. Additionally, experts aren't exactly sure if pumping such huge amounts of compressed CO2 underground is really safe.
Rockefeller said he understands that coal miners in West Virginia are afraid of efforts by the Obama administration to more strictly regulate mountaintop-removal mining, and worried just as much by talk about limiting coal-fired power plant emissions to address global warming. Rockefeller said the coal industry needs to accept the scientific consensus about climate change and get about the business of dealing with the problem.
"A lot of people and some operators I run into fairly frequently say it's all a hoax," Rockefeller said. "Well, it isn't. It is, of course, real, and we have to do something about it.
"The question is: Do you want to produce coal or do you want to sit back and be scared of some government program," Rockefeller said. "Coal miners can't be afraid of the future. They've got to look at this and say: 'That's the future.'"
Rockefeller also addressed concerns that the Mountaineer Plant effort is aimed only at the emissions equal to about 20 megawatts of the 1,300-megawatt facility.
"You can say it's only a very small part of the emissions," Rockefeller said. "That's not the point. They have chosen as you do in science, to start out with small steps."
Also, Rockefeller said the federal government should invest between $20 billion and $25 billion - more than twice what is allocated in current legislation - on CCS research and development.
Rockefeller criticized one bill that passed the House and another that is pending in the Senate for proposing near-term cuts in carbon dioxide emissions of 17 percent and 20 percent, respectively, by 2020.
Some coal industry supporters, including the United Mine Workers union, argue that those near-term cuts don't give coal companies and utilities time to perfect and deploy CCS equipment on hundreds of power plants around the country.
Rockefeller said he wants to reduce the near-term emissions cuts to 14 percent by 2020.
However, Morris, the AEP president, said he would support the 17 percent cut by 2020 that was included in a bill that passed the House earlier this year.
Christina Johnson, an undersecretary of Energy in the Obama administration, praised the pilot project as proof that "we can power our country, clean our air, and grow our economy."
Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kw...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1702.
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After the fall of communism in the late 1980s, communists did not simply concede defeat; they sought out new ways to achieve their objectives. The environmental movement, with its universal appeal of cleaner air, water, etc., became the new vehicle of favor. Declaring that the planet and mankind are in imminent peril, and that only major reductions in energy consumption and industrial activity can save us, this new tactic is succeeding. And such will have dire economic consequences for us all.
The only real issue to debate is the economic impact. Those whose income is tied to fossil fuels are obviously reluctant to agree to reducing their income for the sake of the rest of the planet, but that short-sighted greed necessarily means that they put their short-term income above the lives of others and the environment of all. I acknowledge that there is an economic argument about who should pay and who should benefit, but there is no substantial debate about the climate science.
First, is a global rise in temperatures--if such is actually occurring--necessarily a bad event? As the very best scientists in the world have no idea whatsoever what an "ideal temperature" would be for our planet, we have no way of knowing whether any temperature change, in any direction, is or is not harmful. Additionally, there is no way to state conclusively that a reduction in any human activities would greatly influence global temperature levels one way or the other. There simply are no data to support the "conclusions" that Democrats have eagerly embraced as factual. But it is such ridiculous "conclusions" that now permit the anti-capitalistic left to place draconian burdens upon American industry under the guise of a cleaner planet.
In the meantime, Red China's industrial production--fueled mainly by coal--continues to grow.