According to Mr James Laurita chairman of West Virginia Coal Association, the loss of manufacturing to other countries is a serious issue of national security and needs to be addressed as part of national energy policy.
Mr Laurita's thoughts on this issue will help to shape the agenda of the West Virginia Coal Association over the coming year.
Mr Laurita President and CEO of Morgantown based coal producer Mepco LLC assumed the chairmanship of the WVCA board of directors on Aug. 5 for the coming year. He is a longtime member and recently served as second vice chairman of the board.
He said that Mepco is the largest independent producer of coal in northern West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania. It supplies the Longview power plant north of Morgantown that came online in 2011, a facility he was involved in bringing to the area.
Mr Laurita said that all parts of the energy industry have had a hard time during and following the recession. Although natural gas is a new competitor with coal for the production of baseload electricity, it is likely to continue to have a larger role than in the past. New technology has reduced the cost of its extraction at the same time as increasing regulation has increased the cost of electricity from coal. But he doesn't believe natural gas prices will remain as low as they are now.
Greater regulation likely is coming to the gas industry as well prices will have to come up because gas producers are losing money in the current market. That will help coal gain more favor again.
Mr Laurita does not believe recent court judgments rolling back Environmental Protection Agency regulatory actions will help the coal industry much. Although a July 31st 2012 decision set aside the EPA's guidance on conductivity for streams below surface mines in Appalachia. He believes the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement's forthcoming replacement for the Stream Buffer Zone rule will have about the same effect. He was very upset when West Virginia Democratic Mr Sen Jay Rockefeller admonished the coal industry on June 20th 2012.
Mr Rockefeller said that "Carefully orchestrated messages that strike fear in the hearts of West Virginians and feed uncertainty about coal's future are the subject of paid television ads, billboards, break room bulletin boards, public meetings, letters and lobbying campaigns. A daily onslaught declares that coal is under siege from harmful outside forces and that the future of the state is bleak unless we somehow turn back the clock, ignore the present and block the future."
Mr Laurita said that he has spent a significant amount of time with Rockefeller and his staff over the past year discussing a sustainable future for new generation using coal fired technology. He has explained to the senator that, although the Longview plant is one of the cleanest and most efficient coal fired stations in the country, neither it nor any plant could meet the EPA's standards for toxic emissions for future plants because the technology does not exist. We understand that there's a dire need. The U.S. in general wants a cleaner environment. Although I have a lot of opinions about that, the US wants a cleaner environment and we understand that, so let's transition but we've got to do it in baby steps.
Mr Laurita applies the same reasoning to the development of technologies that would capture climate warming carbon dioxide emissions, often referred to as carbon capture, use and storage or CCUS, widely seen as necessary to the future viability of coal. If that's where we need to go, the US government has to step up and help develop the technology referring to AEP's inability to get approval to pass its CCUS costs on to ratepayers and the government's decision to de fund the FutureGen demonstration CCUS plant. For them to expect the private sector to carry that burden, it's not realistic. So it's got to step up. We're willing to sit down and discuss that.
Source - State Journal.com
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