President Bush Addresses the 2008 Annual Meeting of the West Virginia Coal Association

Today my administration announced $36 million for new carbon capture projects. In other words, it's more than just research. We're now beginning to get into the implementation stage of promising new technologies. And eventually the technology may allow us to prevent 90 percent of coal's carbon emissions from being released into the environment. We're working collaboratively together, and I want to thank the Coal Association's support of this kind of technology and research and development. It makes a lot of sense.

Secondly, we've got to use nuclear power. Coal is obviously going to be an important part of the mix as we go forward, and it should be. What do they say -- got 250 years of reserves here? That's a long time. Two hundred and fifty years is -- of reserves should say, gosh, we're in good shape; we got energy available right here in the United States of America.

This new technology will help us use those reserves, but we can also use nuclear power, too. I'm a big believer in civilian nuclear power. I think it makes a lot of sense. People out there in the environmental community talk about the need for zero-emission, renewable fuel -- there's one right there called nuclear power. And they ought to be supporting nuclear power.

Part of the problem with nuclear power is that it's hard to get a plant built because of excessive regulation and lawsuits. You understand the deployment of capital. There has to be certainty when it comes time to deploy capital. The deployment of capital entails risk, and that is the return on -- whether or not there's a decent return on your capital. But risk can also come if the government steps in at the last minute or a lawsuit steps in the last minute and says all the capital you deployed isn't going to be utilized. And that's been part of the problem.

So we're working to -- and by the way, there hasn't been one new nuclear power plant built in this country in 30 years. If you're interested in making sure that we've got a viable economic future we need electricity, and we can get good electricity from coal and we can get good electricity from nuclear power as well.

So we've been working to help eliminate the barriers to development in nuclear power plants. We want there to be regulatory certainty. We want there to be fewer lawsuits. We invested more than $300 million in research and development for energy technology. We want these little ones when they grow up to know that there's safe engineering in these plants.

We've launched a program called Nuclear Power 2010, which is a partnership between the industry and the government to encourage the construction of new plants. Interestingly enough -- I'm sure this hasn't made it to you yet, but I think you'll find this interesting that we've received applications to build or operate 18 new nuclear reactors in the United States. And we anticipate another seven applications submitted this year. I'm glad to report that because there needs to be a comprehensive plan. There's not a single solution to making sure we got enough electricity. There needs to be a comprehensive solution.

And here's an important part of the plan. We ought to be utilizing wind. I tell people all the time they ought to be putting wind turbines in Washington -- (laughter and applause) -- particularly those that utilize hot air. (Laughter.) We've increased our wind production by more than 400 percent since 2001. There's a lot of wind turbines out in my part of the country, out in west Texas in the desert where there's a lot of wind and a lot of open space.

Interestingly enough, last year more than 30 percent of the new electrical generating capacity came from wind. And this country has installed more wind power capacity than any other country in the world. It's an interesting mix, isn't it? Make no mistake about it, most of the energy is going to come from the kind of plants that we now have in existence, but wind can be an additive, it can be an additional part of an energy mix.

And so can solar energy. Solar energy has got a lot of promise, particularly in parts of the world where the sun shines a lot. (Laughter.) We're working hard to figure out what's available, what's viable, how do you store, how do you feed back into the electricity grid solar energy. My only point to you is, is that -- I'm going to keep saying this over and over again, because the country has got to hear it -- we need a variety of sources of power in order to deal with the problems today, and as importantly send the signal that the future is going to be viable for people, that's there's going to be plenty of electricity. (Applause.)

I want to talk to you about gasoline prices here for a while. And there are some things we can do, there's some signals we can send. We're living in an interesting world, because a demand for oil in a remote part of the world affects the gasoline prices right here in West Virginia.

Oil is a commodity, and there are now growing economies like China and India that are demanding more oil in order to keep their economies growing. I don't know if you know this or not, but I find it very interesting that in India there are 350 million people in their middle class. That's more than all of America.