Wise County Coal
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality is now considering granting a Clean Air Act pre-construction permit to Dominion Power for a new coal-fired powerplant in Wise County. This plant will provide needed jobs to a job-strapped part of our state. It will provide the Commonwealth needed electrical generation capacity - most of which is needed by folks in Northern Virginia. It will be the cleanest coal-fired plant in the state and its priority pollutants will have no adverse effect on northern Virginia. Indeed, the company modeled pollution effects to within 35 miles of Fairfax County, showing no adverse effect. So, what's the problem?
The problem is coal. Better said, it is that the plant will produce CO2 emissions. That's what happens when one combusts coal, natural gas, trash (yes we burn that for energy too). So what's the problem with CO2? Well, it is a greenhouse gas and the general consensus is that the world needs to cut back on CO2 emissions. Indeed, the nation's foremost global warming scientist, Jim Hansen, claims we need to reduce our CO2 emissions to near zero, and within the next 12 years.
Well, that isn't going to happen. We don't have the capacity to stop using existing coal-fired power plants. Look at what happened in Florida just this week when a single power generating plant had to be taken offline on an emergency basis. The whole electrical grid in Florida crashed.
So, if we don't want coal, what's left? Well, not wind power and not solar power. We don't have enough places to reliably generate enough wind power to equal what we have in coal power now. In fact, we don't even have enough places to reliably generate enough wind power to equal the capacity of the proposed Wise County facility. Our alternative is nuclear power. It is clean (no traditional pollutants). It doesn't emit CO2. We have uranium deposits in the state, so coal miners can become uranium miners. And about a third of the state's power now comes from nuclear, so we know how to run the plants safely, efficiently and reliably.
If someone wants to make a statement about the Wise County facility, they have but one option - recommend using nuclear instead of coal. Any other recommendation would be disingenuous on its face. Fairfax County's Chief Executive pulled the letter that was supposed to go before the Board of Supervisors which would have cast some doubt on the wisdom of building the Wise County plant. He probably did not do it on the basis that controlling CO2 is a responsibility the courts have now stated is pre-empted by federal law, so that it isn't a local or even a state duty. He probably did not pull the letter because it failed to recommend nuclear as a replacement for coal (it didn't). He probably pulled it because it make Fairfax County look like they didn't care about people who need jobs in Wise County, and because the position is a political non-starter in Richmond.
So, it looks like the COG is going to be given the opportunity to say they don't like the proposed plant. I will bet you dollars to donuts they won't mention nuclear either. But the COG doesn't really care about the politics in Richmond or the people who need jobs in Wise County. They don't even care about Northern Virginia's need for reliable electricity. Afterall, the District gets its electricity from Alexandria and from Maryland, and Maryland doesn't need Dominion Power at all.
The question is whether Fairfax County's representatives to the COG on this issue will go along with the crowd or take a principled stand on the issue. Time will tell.
