“CLEAN” COAL – DOA

Utility Shelves Ambitious Plan to Limit Carbon
Mathew L. Wald and John M. Broder, July 13, 2011 (NY Times)

"A major American utility is shelving the nation’s most prominent effort to capture carbon dioxide from an existing coal-burning power plant…American Electric Power has decided to table plans to build a full-scale carbon-capture plant at Mountaineer, a 31-year-old coal-fired plant in West Virginia, where the company has successfully captured and buried carbon dioxide in a small pilot program for two years…"

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[Bruce Nilles, National Anti-Coal Campaign Director, Sierra Club:] “…now that AEP has admitted that carbon capture and storage from coal makes no rational economic sense, we can move beyond the decade-long obsession w/CCS and get serious about carbon reduction measures like ending coal use and increasing use of wind and solar. CCS has been a huge distraction from what is needed - a focus on carbon-free alternatives…”

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"The technology had been heralded as the quickest solution to help the coal industry weather tougher federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions. But Congressional inaction on climate change diminished the incentives that had spurred A.E.P…[and A.E.P.] said they were dropping the larger, $668 million project because they did not believe state regulators would let the company recover its costs by charging customers, thus leaving it no compelling regulatory or business reason to continue the program."

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"The federal Department of Energy had pledged to cover half the cost, but A.E.P. said it was unwilling to spend the remainder in a political climate that had changed strikingly since it began the project… The West Virginia project was one of the most advanced and successful in the world…But the company...will complete early engineering studies and then will suspend the project indefinitely…"