Coal advocates say carbon capture and storage essential; some experts say it will come by 2020

Advocates of coal must deal with "the 800-pound gorilla -- and that's climate change," Steve Miller, president and CEO of the Virginia-based American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, said yesterday at Coal-Gen 08, a gathering expected to draw about 4,000 people to Louisville through tomorrow.

Miller was one of several speakers who said "Coal is indispensable to U.S. electric generation and will remain so for years to come but the power industry must tackle the problem of greenhouse-gas emissions and do a better job of explaining that coal can be a clean fuel," Bill Wolfe reports in The Courier-Journal.

"Half the generation in the United States will continue to be from coal," said Vic Staffieri, chairman and CEO of of Louisville Gas and Electric Co. and Kentucky Utilities Co., subsidiaries of E.On U.S. He said the two utilities generate 97 percent of their electricity from coal, and their parent firm believes "There needs to be a national greenhouse-gas emissions policy, but one that is gradual and rational." Paul Thompson, E.On's senior vice president of energy services, cited some experts who say a commercially viable technology for capturing and storing carbon dioxide will be developed by 2020. (Read more)