Remarks by Mark Maddox
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy
at the
Dedication of the Seward Waste-Coal Power Plant
New Florence, Pennsylvania
September 30, 2004

Thank you Joel Staff, and good morning all.

Everyone here is literally standing at the leading edge of an on-coming technological revolution that soon will transform the way Americans produce and use energy for the better.

And so, first I want to congratulate everyone involved in the design and construction of this new Seward plant on the technological achievement behind its selection as Power magazine's Power Plant of the Year for 2004.

You took an already-advanced clean-coal technology and moved it a step ahead in waste-coal use, in size and in pollution control.

Dropping emission rates to minor fractions of the old plant while gaining two-and-a-half times more energy production is a turnaround of epic, revolutionary and historic proportions.

Congratulations to the entire Reliant team.

I also want to congratulate Reliant Energy and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania:

• For recognizing that advanced technology can help address the concerns that entangle energy, the environment and the economy;

• And, for joining forces creatively to marshal the financial wherewithal to bring this new plant on-line to serve multiple public purposes.

These multiple purposes make Indiana County and its residents the big winners today:

• First, by having Reliant invest in you and create jobs;

• And second, by taking what was an environmental liability and turning it into an economic asset.

This turnaround demonstrates the truth that underlies an old adage: One man's junk is another's treasure.

Governor Rendell's emphasis on using technology to harvest the energy in Pennsylvania's waste coal is an investment in the environment and the community that returns jobs and low-cost power.

It's an investment based on the principles also expressed in President Bush's coal-related initiatives to use the resources our nation was given.

Pennsylvania's 250 million tons of waste coal may contain as much energy as 3-trillion cubic feet of natural gas - almost as much natural gas as the entire nation required last year for power generation.

And Pennsylvania's 12.4 billion tons of recoverable bituminous and anthracite coal contain more energy than all the combined natural gas reserves of Mexico, Canada and the United States – equal as much as 275 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

America's recoverable coal reserve of more than 270 billion tons contains as much energy as all the world's proven reserves of petroleum, and it is as much as 95 percent of the energy in our combined domestic reserves of coal, oil and natural gas.

No nation in the world has a larger energy reserve of any kind – not Saudi Arabia with the most petroleum, and not Russia with the most natural gas.

President Bush's policies are designed to put our vast reserve, including Pennsylvania's coal, to its highest and best use.

First, we are enacting policies to encourage wider deployment of new technologies like the fluidized-bed combustion used here, and like the technology we call IGCC because it integrates into one new application the technologies of coal gasification and combined-cycle power generation.

This will allow us to increase reliance on coal for electricity and still drive pollution another 70 percent below its already historic lows. We have to increase power output by 45 percent over the next 20 years if we are to have adequate power as a nation and adequate power to fuel job growth.

Next, we have a second generation of advanced coal-use technologies in research and development which will:

• Almost double the present average generating efficiency – raise it to 60 percent;

• Provide liquid fuels such as gasoline and jet fuel;

• And, drive pollution towards zero, eventually producing emissions-free power.

The vehicle for moving forward is the President's Clean Coal Power Initiative, a $2 billion research, development and demonstration program.

Pennsylvania is taking a leading role here too. The largest project selected for Round One of the initiative is the $612 million Coal-to-Clean-Fuels Project at Gilberton.

Gilberton will use anthracite waste to demonstrate that IGCC can provide:

• Electric power at very low emissions;

• 5,000 barrels a day of ultra-clean liquid fuels;

• Industrial sulfur and an ingredient for building material;

• Economic removal of waste piles and their consequences;

• And, a stream of sequestration-ready carbon dioxide removed from the fuel gas – an important step toward zero-emissions generation with coal.

With the price of oil near $50 a barrel and gasoline still close to $2 a gallon, it's worth noting that Gilberton's objectives include production of a variety of liquids that can serve as the basis for diesel fuel, jet fuel, a high-grade reformulated gasoline and for use in fuel cells.

Arrangements for the Gilberton project are moving forward now, and when they are complete the Department of Energy and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania – through tax credits and other support – will be partners in shaping the future. The federal share of this joint venture is $100 million.

The President's objectives are to make coal environmentally competitive and economically competitive and to keep coal in the energy mix.

In the Department of Energy, we are working to:

• To make all coal a cleaner and cheaper fuel than ever before;

• To widen the uses to which coal can be put;

• And, ultimately, to make coal cleaner and cheaper than any fuel, the source of zero emissions electric power and non-polluting hydrogen for automobiles.

This is the revolution in which this new Seward plant is at the leading edge.

Our national security depends on making use of the abundant energy resources that we have here at home. Coal, including waste coal, must play an important part in our present and future energy mix. It helps moderate demand for imported petroleum and for natural gas.

This new generation of clean-coal technology makes it possible to do this, and to do this without compromising the environment.

To get the new electric power we'll need over the next 20 years, we'll have to duplicate the new Seward plant more than 190 times. If we don't, we won't have affordable or reliable electric power and the jobs it brings or the other jobs it supports.

Technology and enterprises like this new Seward plant enable us to shape the future we want rather than to be bent out of shape in the future by events we can't influence.

This is what the President has in mind when you hear him say, as he does from time to time, "We have to use more coal."

Thank you for your attention.