What they’re saying about clean coal technology

With climate change legislation passing through the Senate, we’ve heard many opinions from public officials on issues concerning energy policy and clean coal technology:

E&E News article (9/11): “Five influential coal-state Senate Democrats” -- Sens. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Warner of Virginia, and Arlen Specter and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania – introduced draft legislation that “they say would help with the widespread commercial deployment of carbon capture and sequestration technologies.”

Bob McDonnell, Republican candidate for Virginia governor, CNBC (10/6): “We're one of the largest coal-exporting states in the country. We've actually got the largest coal exporting port in the world in Hampton Roads, Virginia. I'm a strong supporter of the coal industry. There's a lot of innovation going on with carbon sequestration … coal gasification that in another five or 10 years might provide another use of coal. It's going to be very good for Virginia.”

Our team also had the opportunity last week to attend the Gasification Technologies Conference in Colorado Springs, Colo., where emerging technologies were on display. We noted that:

Neville Holt of the Electric Power Research Institute (10/5): “What we got to do is operate the whole thing -- coal to kilowatts and sequester the CO2 continuously at a million tons a year just as soon as we possibly can.”

Dave Freudenthal, Wyoming governor (10/5): “We should advocate, and advocate fairly broadly, for a fully diverse energy mix in this country going forward. That the current attitude of selecting technologies based on prejudice rather than on analysis is going to be, I think, the undoing of this country.”