Roll Call: K Street Files: Capito Backs Marketing Tour for Coal
By Matthew Murray

A monthlong traveling road show sponsored by the coal industry will make a stop on Capitol Hill this week. The national marketing tour — titled “Clean Coal Technology. It Works.” — is sponsored by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and arrives Thursday on the National Mall.

The office of Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) is coordinating the event with the industry group. In an interview Monday, the co-founder of the Congressional Coal Caucus agreed the messy black lumps have a public relations problem — an education gap that she said the coalition’s tour may help in bridging.

“I think there are segments and populations of this country who resoundingly reject coal in any form or fashion,” she said. “Educating folks on the progress that’s being made in clean-coal technology and the carbon capture and sequestration is exceedingly important.”

According to its website, the coalition is supported by railroad firms, heavy equipment makers and utility companies, including Ameren, BNSF Railway Co., Caterpillar, CSX Corp., General Electric Co., Southern Co., Peabody Energy and Union Pacific.

The group’s mobile classrooms are to be parked near the Botanic Garden on Maryland Avenue Southwest from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. And you can count on at least one Member — Capito — schlepping down the Capitol’s West Front to the vehicles, whose interiors are decked out with iPads, flat-screen televisions and other modern devices that make the case for an energy source whose critics call it anything but futuristic.