• Draft Virginia law would have threatened closure of plant considered cleanest of its type

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    • Post Author

      Patrick Lavery

      Combustion Industry News Editor


  • A draft law in the Virginia state legislature threatened to force the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center, reputed to be the US’s cleanest power plant of its type in the world, to close early, as Manufacturing.net reports. The 600 MW plant, which uses circulating fluidised bed boiler technology and is capable of firing coal, coal gob, and biomass, was completed in 2012, and is situated in Wise County in the west of the state of Virginia, being owned and operated by Dominion Energy. The original draft of the Clean Economy Act proposed that the VCHEC would have to close if it could not reduce emissions by 83% by 2030, which would mean that carbon capture and storage would have to be up and running at the facility by then. However, it has since been amended such that the cut-off year would be 2050, which would give the plant a chance to serve much more of its design life. One would think, however, that CCS could be installed at the plant earlier than 2050.

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