PERSPECTIVE: Opportunity exists with coal-fired power plant

» The proposed coal sequestration demonstration center would help transform clean-energy production, right here in Virginia.

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. 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 last week 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.

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.

Bristol Herald Courier