A senior Obama administration official said that the A.E.P. decision was a direct result of the political stalemate.

“This is what happens when you don’t get a climate bill,” the official said, insisting on anonymity to discuss a corporate decision that had not yet been publicly announced.

At the Energy Department, Charles McConnell, the acting assistant secretary of energy for fossil energy, said no carbon legislation was near and unless there was a place to sell the carbon dioxide, utilities would have great difficulties in justifying the expense. “You could have the debate all day long about whether people are enlightened about whether carbon dioxide should be sequestered,” he said. But, he added, “it’s not a situation that is going to promote investment.”

His department has pledged more than $3 billion to other industrial plants to encourage the capture of carbon dioxide for sale to oil drillers, who use it to more easily get crude out of wells.

The West Virginia project was one of the most advanced and successful in the world. “While the coal industry’s commitment and ability to develop this technology on a large scale was always uncertain, the continued pollution from old-style, coal-fired power plants will certainly be damaging to the environment without the installation of carbon capture and other pollution control updates,” said Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, co-author of the House climate bill. “A.E.P., the American coal industry and the Republicans who blocked help for this technology have done our economy and energy workers a disservice by likely ceding the development of carbon-capture technology to countries like China.”

A.E.P., which serves five million customers in 11 states, operated a pilot-scale capture plant at its Mountaineer generating station in New Haven, W.Va., on the Ohio River, from 2009 until May of this year. But the company plans to announce on Thursday that it will complete early engineering studies and then will suspend the project indefinitely.