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CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- President Obama announced plans Wednesday to try to speed development of greenhouse gas control technology he said would ensure that the coal industry can "create jobs and provide energy well into the future."

Obama directed top aides to form an inter-agency task force to implement his previously announced goal of getting 10 major test projects running by 2016.

The president charged Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson with "figuring out how we can deploy affordable clean coal technology on a widespread scale within 10 years."

"It's been said that the United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal -- and that's because, as I said, it's one of our most abundant energy resources," Obama said. "If we can develop the technology to capture the carbon pollution released by coal, it can create jobs and provide energy well into the future."

Obama announced his plan to kick-start so-called CCS technology at the start of a White House meeting with about a dozen governors from energy-producing states, including West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin.

Manchin had been seeking a one-on-one meeting with Obama for several months to object to the administration's crackdown on mountaintop removal coal mining.

But the governor had to settle for the broader meeting, and his concerns about mining permit reviews were somewhat upstaged by the president's CCS announcement and a related move by the administration regarding biofuels.

Manchin said later he "got to ask everything and say everything I had on my mind" and walked away with some agreements -- and some disputes -- with Obama and the president's top energy and environmental staffers.

"We both agree that the way we use coal today, we're in a transition," Manchin told reporters in a conference call. "It could be 30 to 50 years before they find a new fuel of the future."

Manchin said he told Obama "I think that coal has been unfairly villainized" and that the president "disagreed with me about that."

The governor also said mountaintop removal was high on the president's radar screen. "There's no bones about it," Manchin said, "They're not a fan of mountaintop removal."

White House officials declined comment on the mountaintop removal portion of Wednesday's closed-door meeting, and the matter was not addressed in Obama's prepared remarks that were publicly released.

Coal industry officials, West Virginia business leaders and coalfield politicians have argued the Obama administration is waging a "war on coal," by trying to limit mountaintop removal's environmental effects and pushing for limits on power plant emissions that cause global warming.

In a presidential memo, Obama said "comprehensive energy and climate legislation" that caps greenhouse gases "will provide the largest incentive for CCS because it will incentives for utilities to invest in the technology. Some within the coal industry, including American Electric Power and the United Mine Workers union, agree with that general strategy.

However, the latest scientific reviews estimate that CCS isn't likely to "make important contributions" to dealing with climate change until at least 2030. And 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 emissions to avoid the most serious effects on the plant and human society.

Meanwhile, even strong advocated of CCS say 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 that is needed. And experts aren't exactly sure if pumping such huge amounts of compressed carbon dioxide underground is really safe.

Obama instructed his task force to "explore incentives for commercial CCS adoption and address any financial, economic, technological, legal, institutional, social, or other barriers to deployment."

The president's 10-year goal for making CCS available for widespread deployment matches what AEP's experts have said is the "earliest" possible date that the technology will be ready.

Chu, a Nobel-prize winning physicist, said, "having looked at the science of this issue myself, and having consulted with experts around the world, I am convinced that this 10-year goal is both necessary and within our reach.

"We're intent on showing that the science and technology can drive down the costs to where it become an affordable solution," Chu said.

Barbara Freese, who follows coal and climate issues for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that Obama's goal matches what her organization has advocated for government spending on CCS development.

Freese said the administration plan for 10 demonstration projects is more reasonable than House and Senate legislation that also include per-ton incentives for utilities sequestering carbon dioxide emissions.

"We think that step is premature, because we don't know how well this technology is going to work or how it's cost compare," Freese said. "It's important for us to find out how this technology works and how much it costs."

Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kw...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1702.