Nov. 3--NEW HAVEN, W.Va. -- The British government is already convinced that carbon capture and storage, also known as CCS, will keep coal in the energy mix for decades to come.

Dominick Chilcott, deputy head of the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., attended the commissioning of a CCS project at American Electric Power's Mountaineer Plant on Friday "because we see CCS as absolutely crucial to the future."

The project here captures carbon dioxide from a 20-megawatt electric slipstream of the plant's flue gas. A chilled ammonia process patented by Alstom, a global engineering company headquartered in France, is used to liquefy the carbon dioxide, which is then pumped underground for long-term storage.

This project will help validate the effectiveness of Alstom's chilled ammonia process and the viability of storing the liquefied gas underground. The project will operate for up to five years.

Chilcott said the British government recognizes that energy and climate change are important topics that must be addressed. "We're very realistic about this," he said. "We recognize we need to deal with man-made climate change as a phenomenon, but in a way that doesn't bankrupt our economy and provides energy security.

"Coal is really important to all of our economies," he said. "Thirty-three percent of our electricity is generated from coal, 40 percent is from natural gas, 20 percent from nuclear and about 5 percent from renewables. We expect renewables to increase. We think gas has probably peaked because the North Sea gas field is being used up. We have vast reserves of coal in the United Kingdom. We believe coal is going to continue to be an important part of how we generate electricity in the U.K.

"For every single unit of energy produced from coal, we produce about twice the volume of carbon dioxide as the same unit produced with natural gas," Chilcott said. "If we're serious about reducing carbon dioxide emissions -- and we believe we have to be serious -- we have to find a way to keep using coal and at the same time reduce emissions."

Chilcott said he traveled to New Haven "to demonstrate the British government's support for what's going on in West Virginia and for what Alstom is doing." He called the CCS demonstration project here "an innovative use of technology" that promises "a safer, more secure future for all of us on the planet -- and West Virginia is showing the way."

He said the British government has adopted a two-part policy:

--Any new 300-megawatt or larger coal-fired power plant built in England and Wales must have the ability to be fitted with CCS technology.