Continuing our look at this year’s State of the State addresses, we turn to West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, a Democrat. In his 2010 address on Wednesday, Jan. 13, he did not mention manufacturing and the only reference to industry was a passing reference to taxation of industrial property.

But this exercise — searching only for the terms “manufacturing” and the like — is limited. Manchin, a Democrat, certainly gave manufacturers prominent play in his speech, especially in the area of energy and coal:

We have more than 1,000 megawatts of wind power in service or in development – that’s enough to power more than 250,000 homes! And we have the third-largest wind capacity of any eastern state.

The world’s first successful carbon capture and sequestration project is at AEP’s Mountaineer Power Plant in Mason County, and an advanced pilot project is capturing CO2 at the Dow Chemical plant in South Charleston.

These pilot projects will lead the way for implementation of this technology at coal-fired power plants around the world.

Plans are moving ahead on a coal-to-liquids project in Mingo County that will use state-of-the-art cleaner coal technology. Through this technology, West Virginia coal will be our primary energy source as we make the transition to the fuels of the future.

Manchin also gave a plug to developing the natural gas resources in the Marcellus Shale.

Earlier posts on states of the state.

Last week we took a look at the Presidential candidates’ Senate records on energy, noting that Sen. Obama had sponsored legislation to increase research into coal-to-liquids technology (Fischer-Tropf) but then moved away from that aspect of coal development as his campaign got going. Coal-to-liquids transformation is high on the environmentalists’ list of things to hate (right below Alberta oil sands), so primary politics played a role in the evolving positions.

So it’s interesting to see one of Obama’s prime constituencies fully embracing coal-to-liquids. We’re talking American Indians, specifically the Crow Tribe in Montana.  (The Crow Agency’s website prominently features the May political rally held with Senator Obama.) And now the tribe has signed an agreement for a major new energy project.

CROW AGENCY, Mont. — A $7 billion coal-to-liquids plant proposed for southeastern Montana’s Crow reservation promises an economic boon for the region, but must first overcome economic and political hurdles that have kept any such plant from being built in the United States.

The Many Stars plant — a partnership between the tribe and Australian-American Energy Co. — would convert the reservation’s sizable coal reserves into 50,000 barrels a day of diesel and other fuels.

State officials said Friday it represents the most valuable economic development project in Montana history.

“We’re talking about one of the most technologically advanced, sophisticated energy projects on the planet,” Gov. Brian Schweitzer said at a news conference detailing the project.

The tribe’s interest is economic, the goal being jobs and income and self-improvement. From an earlier AP story:

The American Indian tribe’s chairman, Carl Venne, said the coal-to-liquids project offered an unprecedented chance at improving the lives of the tribe’s 12,000 members. The agreement calls for the Crow to receive up to 50 percent of profits from the plant after investors in the project recoup their costs.

“It means we will become self sufficient as a tribe,” Venne said. “I won’t need no more federal dollars. I won’t need no more state dollars.”

Environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council would prefer your continued dependency, Chairman Venne.

And it’s not even that up-to-date.

But following the post yesterday about Sen. Obama’s support in 2005 for an amendment promoting research in coal-to-liquid technology (Fischer-Tropf), a reader points us to this L.A. Times article from June 2007, “Obama Yields to Greener Side.”

With pressure mounting on Democratic presidential candidates to adopt hard-line positions on curbing global warming, Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday backtracked from his long-held support for a controversial plan to promote the use of coal as an alternative fuel to power motor vehicles.

The Illinois Democrat made his announcement with little fanfare – in a dryly worded and technical-sounding e-mail sent late in the day from his Senate office to environmental advocacy groups – and did not mention the issue during an appearance at a Brentwood gas station designed to shore up his green bona fides with a renewed call to nationalize California’s ambitious goals for reducing carbon levels in fuel.

At issue is legislation, introduced in January, that would give the coal industry tax breaks and other incentives to harness the abundant natural resource as an alternative fuel. A bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Obama and Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), promoted the idea as a way to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil.

But environmentalists charged that coal would produce a dirty fuel and exacerbate global warming, putting Obama in the awkward position of balancing the desires of an industry with a strong presence in his home state against those of a key voting bloc in the Democratic presidential primaries.

No mention of coal-to-liquid in the candidate’s latest energy position paper.