Editor’s Notes: Clean economic possibilities
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Was anyone else surprised last week to learn there is a process for converting plastic feedstock into fuels such as hydrogen? The news that Clean-Seas has a memorandum of understanding with West Virginia to build a facility in Kanawha County is welcomed, of course. But it was also nice to learn such a thing is even possible.
"West Virginia is proud to become Clean-Seas' first U.S. facility, and the mid-Atlantic hub of its Plastic Conversion Network," Gov. Jim Justice said. "This project demonstrates West Virginia's commitment to innovation and technologies that are financially sound and support a clean economy."
Clean-Seas is not the first company to decide West Virginia is the right place to build a green facility. Berkshire Hathaway Energy is building a microgrid to provide solar energy to all the customers within a special business development district around the former Century Aluminum site in Ravenswood. Form Energy will build utility scale storage batteries on the former Weirton Steel site.
Clean-Seas' mission is "To address the crisis of existing plastic waste in the natural world, with specific focus on plastics that are difficult to recycle. We divert plastic waste from ending up in landfills and the natural world and convert this waste to clean eco-fuels and commodities. In identifying and developing efficient and cost effective technology solutions that address the global waste plastic crisis, Clean-Seas creates economic opportunity and social benefit in emerging and developed economies across the world."
How cool is it that the Mountain State could be part of that?
Economic development officials are pitching West Virginia as a state built on coal, yes, but no longer economically bound to it. Thank goodness someone is convincing large employers they will be welcomed here -- and those people are listening. And thank goodness those employers seem to be ignoring the antics of a few in Charleston who would like nothing better than to force West Virginia backward a century or two. (I still, truly, cannot wrap my brain around the reasons for that.)
We do want a clean economy here. We treasure our wild and wonderful landscape and want an economy that helps West Virginians AND West Virginia thrive.
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You have to wonder whether former advisor in the Obama White House David Axelrod understood how helpful to Joe Manchin's cause it was for Axelrod to call Manchin a "dead man walking" in West Virginia. In plenty of pockets of the state, letting voters know a key person in the Obama administration doesn't think much of Manchin's prospects will increase those voters' likelihood of voting for Manchin tenfold.
But, then again, there were an awful lot of people in the Obama administration who never bothered to understand the Mountain State.
"David Axelrod doesn't know a lot about West Virginia politics and is a brilliant strategist but probably doesn't spend much time in West Virginia with Joe Manchin, and should before he counts him out," Jonathan Kott, a Democratic strategist who served as a Senate aide to Manchin, told The Hill.
It's a little early to be counting anyone out -- of any 2024 race. But one thing West Virginians understand that Axelrod appears to have missed: He's been in the game long enough that you can never count out Joe Manchin.
Christina Myer is executive editor of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. She can be reached via e-mail at cmyer@newsandsentinel.com