Dominion’s ad really a fairy tale

By The Daily Progress

Published: May 8, 2008

On May 1, The Daily Progress published a full-page ad from Dominion Power touting its “new clean-coal carbon capture-compatible power station in Wise County” with “the very latest in emissions-control systems.”

The environmentally friendly power plant that Dominion describes is little more than a fairy tale.

The Wise County plant would emit 5.4 million tons a year of heat-trapping carbon – as much as all the cars on the road in metro Richmond.

Dominion’s permit application to the state includes plans to designate a patch of empty land near the plant to build carbon-capture technology ... someday.

Noting that that not one penny of the plant’s $1.8 billion cost would be invested in carbon-capture technology, the State Corporation Commission said that the plant was, in its words, a “conventional coal facility.”

Dominion itself conceded as much by withdrawing its request for special financial incentives for carbon-capture compatible facilities.

Another of the company’s fairy tales is the “very latest in emissions-control systems.” Dominion and its lawyers are pushing for a permit from the Department of Environmental Quality that would allow it to violate federal hazardous pollutant standards.

The plant would emit more than 40 times as much mercury as the newest comparable plant, and four times as much as its Clover plant, built in the mid-1990s. Dominion has refused to consider advanced mercury control technology in use in the United States and Europe.

With full-page ads in this and most major dailies in Virginia — as well as in the Washington Post — Dominion has spent untold dollars on a greenwashing campaign to paint itself as an environmental leader. Don’t believe it.

Sarah C. Rispin

Charlottesville

Sarah C. Rispin is a staff attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center.