Remarks by the President at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the West Virginia Coal Association

Business Wire, July 31, 2008

This year alone we've requested nearly $650 million in the budget for advanced coal research. It's the largest such request in 25 years. The funding is supported -- is supporting the development of technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions that come from coal. This is something the industry wants the government to do. We want us to be on the leading edge of change. We want to be able to capture CO2. These advances obviously are going to make coal more environmentally friendly. It'll make it easier for people to say, let's use this abundant resource.

Today my administration announced $36 million for new carbon capture projects. In other words, it's more than just research. We're now beginning to get into the implementation stage of promising new technologies. And eventually the technology may allow us to prevent 90 percent of coal's carbon emissions from being released into the environment. We're working collaboratively together, and I want to thank the Coal Association's support of this kind of technology and research and development. It makes a lot of sense.

Secondly, we've got to use nuclear power. Coal is obviously going to be an important part of the mix as we go forward, and it should be. What do they say -- got 250 years of reserves here? That's a long time. Two hundred and fifty years is -- of reserves should say, gosh, we're in good shape; we got energy available right here in the United States of America.

This new technology will help us use those reserves, but we can also use nuclear power, too. I'm a big believer in civilian nuclear power. I think it makes a lot of sense. People out there in the environmental community talk about the need for zero-emission, renewable fuel -- there's one right there called nuclear power. And they ought to be supporting nuclear power.

Part of the problem with nuclear power is that it's hard to get a plant built because of excessive regulation and lawsuits. You understand the deployment of capital. There has to be certainty when it comes time to deploy capital. The deployment of capital entails risk, and that is the return on -- whether or not there's a decent return on your capital. But risk can also come if the government steps in at the last minute or a lawsuit steps in the last minute and says all the capital you deployed isn't going to be utilized. And that's been part of the problem.

So we're working to -- and by the way, there hasn't been one new nuclear power plant built in this country in 30 years. If you're interested in making sure that we've got a viable economic future we need electricity, and we can get good electricity from coal and we can get good electricity from nuclear power as well.

So we've been working to help eliminate the barriers to development in nuclear power plants. We want there to be regulatory certainty. We want there to be fewer lawsuits. We invested more than $300 million in research and development for energy technology. We want these little ones when they grow up to know that there's safe engineering in these plants.