In a speech to coal industry executives in West Virginia Thursday, President Bush praised nuclear power and fossil fuels of all kinds, but lavished special praise on coal. “There’s no more reliable source of electricity than coal,” he said. Bush announced $36 million for carbon capture projects, saying CO2 capture would make coal more earth-friendly. “These advances obviously are going to make coal more environmentally friendly. It’ll make it easier for people to say, let’s use this abundant resource.” Bush also urged the environmental community to support nuclear power, calling it a “zero-emission, renewable fuel.” However, he declared that wind power will only be “an additive” to the country’s energy future. “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.” Bush also made sure to renew his calls for offshore drilling and oil-shale development, but he didn’t totally discount a solar-powered future. Instead, he said solar could be especially useful “in parts of the world where the sun shines a lot.”
