Power Plant Carbon Sequestration Era Begins at Mountaineer

SUGAR LAND--October 23, 2009--Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Shortly before 7:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on October 1, the U.S. Power Industry officially entered the carbon-sequestration era. That's when officials from American Electric Power (NYSE:AEP) (Columbus, Ohio) and Alstom Power, a unit of Alstom SA (EPA:ALO) (Levallois-Perret, France), pushed a button to begin sequestering carbon-dioxide emissions from AEP's Mountaineer Power Station in New Haven, West Virginia. As evidence has mounted that burning fossil fuels is connected to an increase in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, utilities and coal companies have stepped up their search for cost-effective ways to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion. It may not be too much to suggest that the future of coal is riding on the results of the Mountaineer CCS validation project.