Spark It Up!!!: The Experts Talk about the Wise County Power Plant

It is good to finally see the real experts talk facts about the new coal fired power plant. We did not have to hear the fact twisting rhetoric of the handful of anti coal mining lunatics telling the majority of Wise County residents they know what is best for them. We did not have to hear a biased Bristol Herald Courier editorialists from another state pull at heartstrings because the birds were not singing on a mountain top in the middle of February. Kathy Still's reporting is excellent as usual. Her article ~Professor defends Dominon's technology as 'very clean'~ reveals the facts about the new power plant.

The speakers were Dr. Michael Karmis. He is the director of the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research at Virginia Tech. He is also a professor with Virginia Tech’s Department of Mining and Minerals Engineering. Dr Karmis was joined by Dr. Richard Wolfe. Dr Wolfe is a coal scientist from Washington County. The best the anti coal activists could do was send in a lawyer, Cale Jaffe from the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville. You read that right my friends. A anti coal lawyer attempting to argue clean coal technology with two nationally known experts with doctorates in their field.

The months of spin about how dirty and hazardous the new plant would be ended. How did it go?

Dr. Michael Karmis, a professor with Virginia Tech’s Department of Mining and Minerals Engineering, said despite critics claims that better technology exists, the circulating fluidized bed technology works best because of the plant’s location in the coalfields and because the General Assembly wants new coal-fired plants to be ready to capture and store carbon emissions when the technology is created. The legislature also wants new coal-fired plants to benefit the region’s economy, he said.
“It is a very clean technology, no question about it,” Karmis said.
But Cale Jaffe, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville, disagrees.
“It’s a horrible fit for carbon capture,” Jaffe said of the CFB technology Dominion plans to use at the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center if it gets permits to build the facility.

It makes you smile to see a lawyer arguing with a scientist from Virginia Tech.

Karmis, who is working on a piece of the federal Department of Energy’s national project to find ways to capture and store carbon emissions rather than releasing the greenhouse gas into the air, said CFB remains the best choice for the 584-megawatt plant.

Now Dr Wolfe

"a coal scientist from Washington County who has worked for years on coal technology, agrees that CFB would work best for the Dominion plant.
“This technology provides both the most advanced environmental protection and the lowest price for electricity production,” Wolfe said. He added that studies have shown IGCC plants “come up short in a lot of areas” and the commercial use of the technology in electricity generation at an acceptable cost won’t be ready for almost another decade."

I only touched a small part of Ms Still's report so go read it all here. The facts about this plant are on record. The anti coal lies about how dirty this plant is has been proven false. For months time has been wasted listening to these protests and now they have been shown to be what most Wise County residents knew from the beginning-FALSE. The experts have spoken. A lawyer has returned to Charlottesville, and the birds are singing in February here in Wise County. Build the plant that hard working people of Wise County want.