By Mike Tony, Charleston Gazette-Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A panel of West Virginia legislators has approved a bill that would allow the state Division of Natural Resources to lease state-owned pore spaces under lands designated as state parks.
The Senate Economic Development Committee on Tuesday advanced Senate Bill 627 to the full Senate, signing off on the measure that builds on a 2023 law, SB 162, that allowed the DNR to lease state-owned pore spaces underlying state forests and wildlife management areas for sequestering carbon dioxide underground.
The legislation is designed to accommodate carbon capture, use and sequestration technology. Unproven at commercial scale, such technology removes heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and uses it to create products or store it permanently underground to stave off impacts of warming in the atmosphere. Such technology retrofits commercial power plants to mitigate coal and gas asset emissions.
