Wyoming clean coal plant to provide 'economic boon'

As you know by now, advanced clean coal research is taking place all across America.

In Wyoming, researchers at the University of Wyoming and General Electric Co. are planning a $100 million research plant to develop new clean coal technologies. As the Associated Press reported this week, “It should be an economic boon for wherever the plant is built.”

Here’s what Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal (D) says about the facility, to be called the High Plains Gasification Advanced Technology Center: “As the demand for electricity continues to rise, this question of managing carbon while still utilizing coal is an issue we will be confronting for many years to come. I am confident that the research developed at this facility will help us answer some of these questions and keep coal in the mix of cleaner and more secure domestic fuels long into the future."

We’ll let you know more about this project as it progresses.

Comments

[Barry Benjamin]

Waiting, waiting
Waiting
When will the waiting stop? Either get the technology or (I suggest using the word AND) get into a power generating process that is carbon neutral now and phase out coal. You have had time to develop the 'clean' coal technology (just as GM has had the time to develop an electric car) but NEVER thought you would be challenged on the way you produced your power. The times are changing and I suggest they will continue to change faster and faster as the true cost of carbon intensive processes becomes more and more known.

[Megan from ACCCE]

Barry:

I can sympathize with your sense of urgency, however it's important to keep in mind that deploying new energy technologies (wind and solar, too) does take time—but we are making great progress. Due to clean coal technologies, today's coal-based generating fleet is 77 percent cleaner in terms of emissions currently regulated under existing Clean Air Act programs per unit of energy produced.

Furthermore, there are more than 80 carbon capture and sequestration projects currently underway in the U.S. The coal industry has invested more than $50 million to get these technologies ready.