Wise County Coal-Fired Power Plant, Virginia

A coalition of citizens from Wise County and conservation groups, including SELC, continue their opposition to a coal-burning power plant in rural southwest Virginia. Among other problems, the power plant would boost air pollution in the region, accelerate mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia, and increase carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming.

The Wise Energy for Virginia campaign was launched in 2007 to stop the plant and to pressure the state and electric utilities to take aggressive steps to increase energy efficiency, conservation and renewable sources to meet future energy demands in the Commonwealth.

Anything But Clean

Though touted as a state-of-the-art "clean coal" facility, the power plant being built by Dominion Virginia Power will be anything but clean. The facility design uses outdated technology that will result in annual emissions of 5.4 million tons of carbon dioxide?equivalent to the annual carbon output of all the vehicles on the road in metropolitan Richmond.

The Wise County plant also will intensify the environmental destruction wrought by mountaintop removal mining, in which companies blast the tops off Appalachian mountains to expose coal seams and dump rock, rubble  and slurry in nearby valleys, destroying hundreds of streams and ecosystems.

SELC Takes Action

SELC helped convince Virginia’s Air Pollution Control Board to demand stricter limits on harmful emissions from the plant, resulting in an 82 percent reduction in sulfur dioxide and a 94 percent reduction in mercury from what was originally proposed. Nonetheless, SELC went to court on behalf of the Wise Energy for Virginia Coalition to challenge the air permits, which violated the Clean Air Act and failed to rein in the plant’s enormous carbon footprint.

A state judge has ruled in our favor on mercury limits, making the permit’s standard, the lowest in the nation, binding. 

We are now considering an appeal of the other air permit, which still allows excessive fine particulate matter, or soot, which has been linked to dire health effects, including decreased lung function, aggravated asthma, development of chronic bronchitis, heart attacks, and premature death. It also still allows Dominion to emit 5.4 million tons of global warming emissions each year.

Clean and Efficient Alternatives

SELC and the Wise Energy for Virginia Coalition continue to vigorously advocate for energy efficiency and clean, alternative sources of energy that will provide the same level of service and forestall the need for building more coal-fired power plants. We helped lead efforts in the General Assembly last year to start the state on a path for meaningful energy efficiency policy, and we support a project by Dominion and BP to install a large-scale wind farm in Wise County.