Dale Earnhardt Jr. promotes coal in new video

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Carlo Allegri

NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Tom Knox

Reporter- Columbus Business First

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Dale Earnhardt Jr. wants you to get out and vote for coal in next week's election.

The NASCAR driver, who has been the most popular racer for 11 straight years, is stumping for the fossil fuel in a new video from America's Power, an offshoot of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, made of companies involved in using coal to make electricity. Its members include Ohio players American Electric Power Company Inc. (NYSE:AEP), Murray Energy Corp., Buckeye Power Inc. and Consol Energy Inc. (NYSE:CNX).

"Protecting low-cost energy from coal isn't a partisan issue, and everyone stands to lose if regulations are imposed that increase energy costs for families and businesses," Earnhardt Jr. says in the video.

Coal-related companies see their industry as under attack, so using popular public figures to vouch for coal makes sense.

"Their political beliefs may vary, but they can all agree that affordable power is important to us all," Earnhardt Jr., a registered Republican, says of coal workers.

AEP has been vocal in its opposition to the EPA's Clean Power Plan, proposed in June, which would drastically cut coal plant production.

Columbus-based AEP studied how the regulations might affect reliability and "found widespread occurrences of voltage degradation, collapse, and in fact, cascading outages of the electric grid," Akins told analysts last week.

Consol, based near Pittsburgh, is shifting away from coal to natural gas. The company has a presence in Ohio's Utica shale and the Marcellus shale in its home state. Consol reported a slight profit loss in the third quarter on Tuesday, but posted record natural gas production, growing to 64.9 billion equivalent cubic feet, a 41 percent increase from a year ago.