Oct. 31--NEW HAVEN, W.Va. -- Coal was piled high at American Electric Power's Mountaineer Plant in Mason County on Friday. Smoke billowed out of the plant's towering stack.

Inside white tents and a makeshift auditorium, West Virginia political leaders and industry officials celebrated the start of a pilot project they hope will allow that coal to be burned without spewing heat-trapping carbon dioxide out into the air.

"This truly is an historic moment at an historic place," AEP President Michael Morris told several hundred visitors on hand for the kickoff ceremony. "This is really special."

Morris and other AEP officials hope they can capture a small stream of the Mountaineer Plant's carbon dioxide emissions, pump it underground, and store it safely a mile and a half below the Ohio River bottomland just outside the town of New Haven.

If the project works, it could pave the way for larger tests of technology for carbon capture and storage, or CCS -- a process that most energy experts see as the only way for coal to survive limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Gov. Joe Manchin and hundreds of other folks joined Morris for Friday's celebration, which also was attended by dozens of media representatives from around the world.

"Bringing this to West Virginia is something we're very proud of, and it's the right thing to do," Manchin said. "We have produced electricity and energy for this country for decades, and we would like to continue to be part of the solution."

Manchin said coal-fired power can be a "bridge" to a future in which other alternative sources play a much larger role across the world.

However, the latest scientific reviews estimate that CCS isn't likely to "make important contributions" to dealing with climate change until at least 2030. AEP officials believe it might be ready for widespread deployment sooner than that, perhaps by 2020.

At the same time, many climate scientists are seeing signs that the world is warming much faster than they expected, and are urging fast reductions in greenhouse gases to avoid the most serious effects on the planet and human society.

Meanwhile, even strong advocates of CCS say that it faces a long list of hurdles. CCS is expensive. It sucks up a lot of a power plant's energy and takes up tremendous space that might not be available at every site.

Power companies also haven't figured out exactly how to do CCS on the monumental scale needed. Additionally, experts aren't exactly sure if pumping such huge amounts of compressed CO2 underground is really safe.

-----

To see more of The Charleston Gazette, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.wvgazette.com.

Copyright (c) 2009, The Charleston Gazette, W.Va.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

NYSE:AEP,

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.