With Congress hotly debating an economic stimulus package, there’s been a lot of talk lately about government support for various energy sources.
On all sides of this debate, there’s an agreement that there’s no silver bullet — we’re going to need all of our available domestic energy resources to help meet that demand.
That means baseload power sources such as coal, which provides about half of our electricity. And yes it also means renewable energy, which has an important role to play in our energy portfolio when it comes to peaking power.
It is not an either/or situation, and people should remember that we’re not at war with other fuel sources.
Having said that, West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D) made a good point when he said more federal research dollars are needed to develop clean coal technologies, since coal is an affordable and abundant fuel source.
So let’s work together to develop good jobs pursuing clean technologies that will capture and safely store CO2.