CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) – Stakeholders are weighing in on whether lawmakers should get to vote on state plans to meet proposed federal carbon emission…
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) – Stakeholders are weighing in on whether lawmakers should get to vote on state plans to meet proposed federal carbon emission standards for coal-fired power plants.
At a House public hearing Monday, speakers discussed a bill requiring the GOP-led Legislature’s vote before the state sends compliance plans to the EPA. It requires a state feasibility report 180 days after EPA’s rule is finalized.
Environmentalists said legislative approval would be burdensome. Coal industry groups said lawmakers should have more say.
In an anti-global warming push, the EPA aims to drop emissions from existing coal-fired plants by 30 percent nationally by 2030, compared to 2005.
West Virginia’s reduction would be 19.8 percent by 2030, compared to 2012.
State plans are due June 2016, or 2017 with extensions. States that collaborate have until 2018.
After Freedom Industries leaked chemicals into 300,000 people’s drinking water in Charleston last year, a company run by ex-Freedom employees is facing environmental violations a few towns away, in Nitro.
State regulators have cited the new firm, Lexycon, eight times since August. Infractions include pouring chemicals without a permit, lacking proper “last-resort” walls to contain spills, and hosting tanker-trailers of unknown chemicals, among others.
Former Freedom executive Dennis Farrell, who faces up to three years in prison on pollution charges in the Elk River spill, consults for Lexycon.
Robert Reynolds, an ex-Freedom consultant also charged in the spill, had also consulted for Lexycon.
Lexycon president Kevin Skiles owned 5 percent of Freedom’s shares and was a Freedom research and technology official.
The facility was run by Freedom, then sold to Lexycon in May during Freedom’s bankruptcy proceedings.
Landfilling has been the main source of getting rid of waste for centuries. But a new technology coming to West Virginia may change how we think of waste disposal, and in the long run, help our environment.
Entsorga is an Italian resource recovery company that has been around since 1997. About four years ago, the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority was looking for ways to promote a cleaner environment and find a safer and more efficient way to dispose of waste. …Entsorgaended up finding them.
After three years of waiting, Entsorga received approval from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to begin constructing a new resource recovery facility later this year on property owned by the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority. The facility will take anywhere from 65 to 75 percent of the refuse they collect and turn it into fuel instead of putting it in the ground.
“Essentially what you take waste, and you use it as a resource or you use to make energy,” said Clint Hogbin, the chairman of the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority, “This is garbage that will be picked up on the street, no differently then it’s being picked up today. And instead of the truck going to a landfill, the truck will go to a 4 acre building, and unload its waste inside of a building, where mechanical equipment, electro-mechanical equipment will sort and process that waste and prepare it to be used for fuel.”
The Berkeley County facility will be the first Entsorga plant in the country and the first resource recovery facility in West Virginia using a technology called HeBIOT.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Acreage just behind the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority’s main office. The Entsorga facility will be built just beyond this fence.
“HeBIOT is an acronym. It stands for high-efficiency biological treatment, and it’s a patented technology, patent by Entsorga,” Hogbin said, “It uses the biology of waste if you will, the decomposition of waste, to prepare the waste to be used for a fuel.”
Hogbin says while there are other resource recovery facilities in the United States, this facility is the only one that will use the HeBIOT technology. The waste is turned into a confetti-like material by use of high-tech machines operated by humans within a clean room. The material is then dried and can be burned for fuel and used as a replacement for some non-renewable resources like coal. And that’s what Hogbin says may keep the state from embracing the new fueling system.
“We were worried about there being some concern, particularly from downstate, about the impact on coal, because this would be competing with coal,” Hogbin noted.
With the push from the federal government to reduce carbon emission, however, Hogbin says recycling refuse is a viable option for not just West Virginia, but the entire country.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Clint Hogbin, chairman of the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority, stands in the field soon to be under construction.
“Emissions from burning of this material has been studied. It’s been studied by Entsorga. It’s also been studied by the United States Environmental Protection Agency who literally sent this board a letter, advising us their opinion of burning this material was significantly lower or equal to the emissions of burning coal.”
Entsorga has an agreement with another Italian company called Essroc, also located in Berkeley County. The confetti-like material produced at the Entsorga plant, will be sent to Essroc, where this fuel will be used to power the plant that makes cement.
Apple Valley Waste Services will also play a role by providing Entsorga with the garbage it will use to make the fuel.
Hogbin says once the Entsorga facility is up-and-running, it would employ around 12 people, with salaries ranging from forty to sixty-thousand dollars a year.
According to request filed by attorneys at law Hannah and Hanna PLLC back in August, Black Diamond Power admits to overcharging customers $1,686,338…
According to request filed by attorneys at law Hannah and Hanna PLLC back in August, Black Diamond Power admits to overcharging customers $1,686,338 admits to collecting over a five year period.
The document indicates that the company serves about 4,300 so that’s about $385 per customer.
The company proposes to refund $488, 307 to customers over a five year period which would come through a rate reduction. But Black Diamond Power wants to treat the remaining money, treat the remaining $1.198 million as a “customer contribution.”
It appears that the Staff of the Public Service Commission filed recommendations on October 1. In that document, the staff of PSC recommends about $900,000 be recorded as a customer contribution and a reduction of rate base.
Black Diamond Power purchases all of its power from American Electric Power. The business serves at the electric company in parts of Clay, Kanawha, Raleigh and Wyoming Counties with business offices in Sophia, Clay and Mullens.
While the Register Herald is reporting that Black Diamond Power Customers will see a reduction of 1.21 cents per kilowatt hour, Susan Small with the Public Service Commission says transcripts from a hearing on this case held on October 22 were not available. Small also told us that no other details were available since it was an open case.
President of Black Diamond Power, David Musser, was not available for comment but told the Register Herald the rate reduction was made possible by way of American Electric Power reducing its charges to Black Diamond, which was in turn able to give customers a lower rate.
Attorney’s representing the company Hannah and Hannal LLC did not immediately return our request for comment.
Charleston native and West Virginia University graduate student Scott Cushing is in pursuit of one of the holy grails of energy sourcing: instead of using gasoline, or other fossil fuels with harmful emissions, he aims to use water and the sun to harvest hydrogen gas.
“We’re very interested in how you can take sunlight and create a fuel with it. And specifically we want to do that by splitting water into hydrogen. If we can do that, then it’s a resource that’s always there.”
Cushing is deep into research at the nano level working with what are called Plasmons.
“Plasmonics?” Cushing says, “It’s a fancy scientific word to basically describe the fact that we’re making really, really small antennas out of gold.”
So he takes a piece of gold that is smaller than a wavelength of light and uses it as an antenna to harvest and somehow amplify the energy from the sun. He says using noble metals like gold and silver in this way isn’t new, nor is using a semiconductor like those found in solar panels as a way to convert solar energy into a usable fuel.
However on their own, each of these systems lacks key properties to allow high efficiency solar-to-hydrogen conversion, which would conceivably allow us to fill tanks in our back yards with hydrogen for our own personal use.
“So our work went into finding a way to actually couple these together. That’s where these advanced lasers and all of these optics come into play.”
Cushing stands next to a giant floating table—so sensitive that it needs a cushion of air to protect it from the vibrations of the building. And what’s on top of the table? A laser maze. About fifty mirrors and dozens of lenses to control the path-length and manipulate the laser beam. Cushing says that even with the special table, when the temperature changes dramatically outside, sometimes he needs to realign lenses and mirrors.
Cushing explains that there’s a lot of information packed into the journey light takes through space and time. And understanding or observing that information with our limited human perspectives requires some creative maneuvering.
He compares his lasers (there are actually two on the table) to racers, explaining that timing them through this maze of obstacles reveals certain information about how light reacts to the materials they encounter enroute.
“If one comes out earlier,” Cushing says, “he may have seen something completely different than the guy who came out ten minutes later. They come out at the same time and they probably are gonna see around the same experience.”
Cushing says the research is at a point where results are impressive, but it could still be years before a significant breakthrough will make collecting hydrogen gas efficient and marketable.
“We’re getting to the point now where I can take you to the other lab and we can put this magic-looking material in water, shine light on it, and you’ll see [hydrogen] bubbles come off of it. But obviously, there are a lot of steps between that and having an entire field of hydrogen generators in your back yard.”
“It’s like the computer,” Cushing adds. “They made the transistor, and then everyone could start working on it.”
Cushing’s work is funded by the National Science Foundation. The research project is headed by Dr. Nick Wu with Dr. Alan Bristow as a collaborator, both professors act as Cushing’s advisor in pursuing his graduate degree.
