Manchin Says W.Va. Can Help China
Byline: George Hohmann, Daily Mail Business Editor
Gov. Joe Manchin said he’s convinced the Chinese want to clean up their environment and improve the safety of their coal mines and West Virginia can benefit from both efforts.
Manchin spoke with reporters today via conference call from Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province — China’s largest coal-producing region.
West Virginia produces 150 million to 170 million tons of coal a year. In contrast, Shanxi Province produced 600 million tons of coal from underground mines in the past year and in China overall, “they’re talking 2.3 billion tons,” he said. “So it’s quite a production here.”
Manchin met Thursday with leaders of the Shenhua Coal Group. He described the group as China’s largest coal producer, “sort of like Peabody and Consol all being part of American Electric Power.” Shenhua is building a giant coal liquefaction plant and working on carbon sequestration, he said.
“The per capita income in Beijing and Shanghai and some of the larger cities may be $7,000 a year on the high end,” Manchin said.
“The average worker makes about $300 a month — equivalent to $3,600 a year. I guess if we look back to our country in the 1940s and 1950s, we were developing pulverized coal power plants back then. We still use those plants today but we’ve met Phase One and Phase Two of the Clean Air Act, which makes the air cleaner. Now we have the challenge of pulling off the carbon stream and finding a safe way of disposing or using it. I think in the United States we would be hard-pressed to approve an old pulverized-coal plant with old technology. American Electric Power wants to build an integrated gas combined cycle plant, which is much cleaner and makes it more possible to pull off the carbon and metals and get as close to zero emissions as possible. I was very much surprised to see they are working on it also.”
Manchin said he wants to return to China next year “to see their coal liquefaction plant and to see if they can successfully sequester the carbon. That would be a tremendous achievement. We want to work with them on clean coal technology.”
Manchin said he has already talked to Chinese officials about coal mine safety. “I said I hope we can exchange, work with each other to keep our mines and our miners safe,” he said.
“My understanding is, they have a lot of very large mines that have been much more safe than all of the disasters we hear about at smaller mines,” Manchin said. “There must be thousands of smaller mines. I told them we could exchange, we could work on technology and research together.
“I’ve said in open meetings we both have a responsibility to future generations and to the environment to do everything in our power to make sure it’s clean and the safety in the mines is the best it can possibly be. They talked very openly about adopting more safety standards. So we’ll be sharing with them what we can do.”
Manchin said the West Virginians traveling with him include many who have been selling underground mining equipment in China for some time and a few who are looking to do business in China for the first time.
“They (the Chinese) are very open to tell you the technology needed for them to become more efficient and safe is technology provided by West Virginia,” Manchin said. “We’re doing the same type of mining they’re doing. I think we have tremendous opportunities. We’re exporting a great deal that goes here because of the high price of the (West Virginia-made) equipment that goes in.”
Manchin has been in China since Tuesday with a delegation of West Virginians that includes several executives of companies that make coal mine machinery. The delegation visited Shanghai on Wednesday and Thursday and Taiyuan today.
The governor will return to West Virginia on Tuesday, although some in the delegation will remain in Beijing for a major coal mine equipment show.
Contact writer George Hohmann at business@dailymail.com or 348-4836.