Energy technology a new cash crop for Virginia?

WSLS 10

BY REX BOWMAN Media General News Service Published: December 12, 2008

Where tobacco once formed the foundation of the economies in Southside and parts of Southwest Virginia, the cash crop of the future could turn out to be energy research.

Using $32 million wrung from tobacco companies a decade ago, the communities of Lynchburg, Danville, South Boston and Abingdon are preparing to build four energy-research centers where scientists from Virginia Tech, other institutions and private businesses could work to find solutions to the nation’s, and world’s, energy problems.

To the Lynchburg center goes the task of nuclear research. To Danville, bio-energy. To South Boston, wind turbines and green engineering. And to Abingdon, clean coal and natural gas.

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