Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., is bringing two top members of the Senate’s energy committee to the Mountain  State this weekend. Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., will host a press conference with Manchin and Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin June 16 at Yeager Airport to discuss their tour of coal and wind sites in West Virginia. Those tours are slated to take place June 15.

“In West Virginia, we truly have an all-of-the-above approach to energy and, for the first time, I am bringing leaders in both parties together to see how our state is an example of how to develop a comprehensive energy policy using all our domestic resources,” Manchin said. “I invited the incoming leaders of the powerful Senate Energy Committee to our state to see how we can do it all, and to explain how the country can follow this model.”

The tour features coal and wind energy two very different aspects of West Virginia energy. According to a news release, the purpose of the visit is to “tour energy production sites that demonstrate the state’s ‘all-of-the-above’ approach to energy.”

Murkowski is the leading Republican member of the committee; Wyden will be the highest-ranking Democrat after retirement of current chairman Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M. Manchin also is a member of the committee. Bingaman recently introduced a clean energy standard that would put the country on an accelerated path to renewable and alternative energy.

According to the release, the party will visit several sites throughout the state, including a Marcellus shale drilling pad, coal mines, a coal-fired power plant, a wind farm and reclaimed surface mining locations.

Source: State Journal