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Group asks EPA to deny West Virginia authority over carbon storage projects

PARKERSBURG — Seventeen organizations in West Virginia and around the nation are in opposition to the state getting authority to regulate the injection of carbon dioxide for the purposes of geologic storage.

The group wrote a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asking it to deny the authority for the state to regulate carbon storage projects as part of a larger effort to support carbon capture and sequestration. Long-term geologic storage of carbon dioxide is a critical component of the state’s plans for a fossil fuel-based hydrogen hub, the group said.

Carbon capture and sequestration is not a viable strategy for addressing CO2 emissions, Eric Engle, president of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, said. Carbon capture and sequestration does not work at anywhere near the scale necessary, it is prohibitively expensive and unlikely to get cheaper anytime soon and it involves the expansion of pipeline and storage infrastructure, posing a threat to public health and safety, he said.

“So called ‘carbon capture and sequestration’ technology is just another ploy by polluters to avoid the steep emissions cuts we must make this decade,” Engle said.

The groups signing on to the letter to the EPA were the Alliance for Appalachia, Appalachian Voice, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for International Environmental LAw, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Christians for the Mountains, the West Virginia Earthworks, League of Women Voters of West Virginia, Chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby, Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, Our Future West Virginia, People Over Petro Coalition, Protect Our Water, Heritage and Rights, West Virginia Citizens Action Group, the West Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club, West Virginia Environmental Council and the West Virginia Rivers Coalition.

“An understaffed and underfunded DEP has led to leaking oil and gas wells emitting methane and other toxic pollution for years,” said Morgan King, Climate Campaign coordinator for West Virginia Rivers Coalition. “While DEP is making modest progress in ramping up oversight capacity, we have significant concerns about their current ability to take on a highly complex and experimental new program of carbon injection.”

The pending forgivable loans of $62.5 million for the Mountaineer GigaSystem in Point Pleasant shows a lack of “any meaningful community engagement or transparency demonstrates a hostility to the public that makes West Virginia a poor fit to run the EPA’s Class VI program,” said Julie Archer, president of the League of Women Voters of West Virginia.

The project involves the production of hydrogen from natural gas and depositing greenhouse gas emissions beneath state-owned wildlife areas.

“Unless federal regulators reject this primacy application, West Virginians will continue to be cut out of decisions that impact their lives,” she said.

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