Lawmaker: Energy Bill Could Fuel Area Coal Communities

Bluefield Daily Telegraph, July 26, 2005

TAZEWELL, Va. - A national energy bill that emphasizes the use of coal for electricity generation is expected to be approved by Congress Thursday, U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., said Tuesday.

Boucher, a member of the conference committee appointed to hammer out the differences between the House and Senate versions of the energy bill, said the committee completed its work early Tuesday morning. The bill, which could reap benefits for the coal-producing counties of Southwest Virginia, is expected to be signed by President Bush as early as next week.

"I am very pleased," Boucher said of the final energy bill. "I think we have achieved our goal of making sure that coal has a more prominent place in the nation's future. My goal in serving on the committee was to make sure that the bill encouraged the use of coal for electricity generation."

Boucher said he is hopeful that a large number of the 1,900 new electricity units that are expected to be built across the nation during the next 20 years will be coal-fired. In pursuing that goal, Boucher said more than $3 billion dollars in tax benefits and incentives will be utilized to encourage electric utilities to use a new generation of clean-coal technologies that will enable coal to be burned almost as cleanly as natural gas.

"It is of great importance to our region, but it also is strongly of national interest because natural gas prices have climbed," Boucher said. "I believe the provisions that we have placed in the energy bill will redirect that interest to coal for new generating units, and that in return will relieve pressure on natural gas prices to benefit half of the population which uses gas to heat homes, and also to the benefit of the industrial users of natural gas, including farmers whose fertilizer is manufactured in a gas-intensive process."

Boucher said the bill is expected to be approved in its final form by the House and Senate by Thursday and will then be forwarded to the president for his signature.

The broad legislation also includes measures to spur construction of new nuclear power plants and helps farmers by requiring refiners to double the use of corn-based ethanol in gasoline to 7.5 billion gallons a year by 2012, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.