Thursday, December 13, 2007
Editorial: Choking on the politics of coal
Richmond has greased the wheels for a new coal-fired power plant in Southwest Virginia. The state needs a more forward-looking energy plan.
Virginia Dominion Power wants to build a coal-fired power plant in Wise County that the energy giant touts as a "clean coal" operation. But it would become one of the biggest air polluters in the state.
This in a region already choked with poisons spewing from two old coal-fired plants that rival American Electric Power continues to operate in the Southern Appalachians.
Dominion's project might be unstoppable, but it shouldn't be.
Virginia lawmakers essentially gave the project a green light in 2004, when the General Assembly directed the State Corporation Commission to consider any power plant built in Southwest Virginia "a public good" if it uses only Virginia coal. The new plant will use Virginia-mined coal exclusively.
And, as Dominion officials explain, the proposed Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center will pollute less than old coal-fired plants. Plus it will be "carbon-capture compatible."
That means the company expects to be able to add equipment to capture carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and keep it from being released into the air -- just as soon as the technology becomes available. Dominion is sponsoring carbon-capture research at Virginia Tech.
The plant design is eco-friendly enough to be called a "clean coal" operation under federal Department of Energy guidelines, but no one should take that designation literally. "Less dirty coal" would be more apt.
The plant will be allowed to release more than 12,500 tons of pollution each year, including nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide, the latter a cause of serious breathing problems for people with respiratory illnesses.
At that rate, the plant would become the state's ninth biggest polluter -- though Dominion says actual emissions will be lower.
The U.S. Forest Service is not reassured. The supervisor of the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina wrote to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality this week, objecting to the plant's anticipated release of 3,300 tons of sulfur dioxide each year.
That, the Forest Service said, would violate the federal Clean Air Act. Sulfur dioxide is a major cause of acid rain, which could damage plant life in the protected Linville Gorge Wilderness.
Blacksburg Town Council added its voice to the opposition as well with a resolution asking the governor, lawmakers and the SCC to go full bore after programs to manage energy demand before they allow another coal-fired power plant to be built.
Even coal-rich Virginia cannot defer forever a serious energy policy debate. If not now, when?
