SEN. ROCKEFELLER TO RETIRE IN 2014

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
1/11/13

Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), one of the Senate’s most vocal supporters of advanced coal and carbon capture and storage technology, will not seek reelection in 2014, he announced Jan. 11.  Flanked by members of his family and staff, the 75-year-old senior Rockefeller said at a press event in Charleston that he will serve out the remainder of his fifth term before retiring to spend more time with his family. “As I approach 50 years of public service in West Virginia, I’ve decided that 2014 will be the right moment for me to find new ways to fight for the causes I believe in and to spend more time with my incredible family,” he said. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) announced in November that she would run for Rockefeller’s seat in 2014.

Rockefeller is one of Congress’ most staunch supporters of CCS. He introduced comprehensive CCS legislation in 2010 that would have provided funding for R&D and early large-scale projects, created technology and greenhouse gas emissions performance standards for new power plants and clarified long-term stewardship rules for sequestered CO2. Many of those provisions could be recycled in new ‘clean coal’ legislation his office said he would introduce in the new Congress. Rockefeller also co-sponsored a measure last fall with Sens. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) and now-retired Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) that would have clarified the existing federal tax credit for enhanced oil recovery operations.

Rockefeller has been heavily criticized by West Virginia’s powerful coal industry in recent months following a particularly scathing assessment of the industry in a floor speech last summer. He criticized the industry for failing to modernize, instead focusing its attention almost exclusively on fighting “false enemies” like the EPA. “West Virginians understandably worry that a way of life and the dignity of a job is at stake. Change and uncertainty in the coal industry is unsettling. But my fear is that concerns are also being fueled by the narrow view of others with divergent motivations—one that denies the inevitability of change in the energy industry, and unfairly leaves coal miners in the dust,” he said in the June speech. At a subsequent public meeting, Rockefeller said he did not regret his remarks despite backlash from the state’s coal industry. “This issue had been gnawing at me for many years,” the senior senator said at the time.