Opinion Contributor
Fighting off the war on coal
“When the work underground stops,” a TV reporter in Boone County, W.Va., said last Friday, “everything above pays the price.” She was reporting that two local coal mines would soon start laying off workers. One was preparing to lay off 116 miners in a matter of weeks, the second had yet to finalize the number to be let go.
This is a situation that has sadly become all too familiar under the Obama administration’s war on coal. Alpha Natural Resources Tuesday announced it will be scaling back its coal production, eliminating 1,200 jobs and closing eight mines in Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. Alpha’s chief executive officer, Kevin Crutchfield, lamented “a regulatory environment that’s aggressively aimed at constraining the use of coal.”
Continue ReadingThe House on Friday plans to launch a counterattack to the administration’s relentless efforts to regulate coal into oblivion, by voting on the Stop the War on Coal Act to prevent more job losses and plant closures. This is a series of bills that aim to stop the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory assault on the U.S. coal power sector.
The package includes the Energy Tax Prevention Act that we introduced in the House and Senate respectively — and passed the House with bipartisan support. Our legislation would stop the EPA from using the Clean Air Act to impose a costly cap-and-tax agenda that would burden broad sectors of the economy.
Consider, OhioAmerican Energy, this summer announced it would close its coal mining operations in Brilliant, Ohio. It cited “regulatory actions by President Barack Obama and his appointees” as the “entire reason.” GenOn announced in February that it would shutter 13 percent of its generating capacity by 2015, again due to new environmental regulations. FirstEnergy announced in January the early retirement of six plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland, due to the high cost and uncertainty associated with new EPA regulations.
The list goes on. And the EPA is not only targeting coal mines, it is targeting the most significant source of our affordable electricity, coal-fired power plants. More than 200 coal-based electric generation units are due to be shut down, partly due to the EPA’s regulatory assault, accorded to the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity analysis, released this week. The closing of 204 coal units stretches across 25 states and represents 31,000 megawatts of generating capacity. This is the equivalent to turning off the lights across the entire state of Ohio.
There has been a lot of discussion on how close we are to achieving North American Energy Independence by developing our bountiful domestic petroleum resources and partnering with our neighbors in Canada on important infrastructure projects like the Keystone XL Pipeline.
We often take for granted, however, that we are already electricity independent, since we have abundant and reliable resources to power homes and businesses for centuries — unless the Obama EPA gets its way. The Obama administration’s “all of the above but nothing from below” energy policy threatens our electricity independence.
It is coal communities like Boone County, which have struggled mightily during this economic downturn. Every time they get knocked down, they get right back up. Unfortunately, the government has now turned into one of the biggest obstacles to their very way of life.
As more plants and mines shutter, more and more folks will continue to struggle. The Stop the War on Coal Act puts jobs first. We are united in our efforts to protect jobs and stand up for those communities paying the price when the work underground stops.
Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) is ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
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Read all 40 comments in our forumInhofe = conductor of denial train.
This is pure garbage. The coal must stay in the ground or large swaths of the world become uninhabitable, including Phoenix and Las Vegas.
Vote for Obama is a vote for the guy that fired you if you are a coal worker. If you folks vote Dem again, you are surely not paying attention to the war on coal Obama/Biden declared on you at the last election and is following through on now.
Vote for Obama is a vote for the guy that fired you if you are a coal worker. If you folks vote Dem again, you are surely not paying attention to the war on coal Obama/Biden declared on you at the last election and is following through on now.
8 mines and 1200 workers. That's a lot of coal output and pollutants poured in the air without requiring a large labor pool. For renewables to match the same amount of potential energy dug up in those coal mines, it woud require 15 times the amount of workers to deliver the power; the total cost, however, would be similar since the feedstocks (wind and solar) are free. If we're serious about putting more people to work, hire people to fix the rickety grid, install a state of the art low-loss transmission backbone nationally and tax all of the heavy metal output and water depletion that comes from coal mining and natural gas production.
Isn't it great being in reality and science denial and not having to mention the existence of dirty air, acid rain and global warming in your opinion pieces?
Folks - 25 years in energy business experience here - what is killing coal is cheap, domestic natural gas. Plain and simple. Gas is cheaper, more flexible to use as a power plant fuel, easier to access, and, yes, cleaner too. Nothing to do with Obama, just the market at work. Fossil fuel vs. fossil fuel, gas wins.
Mitt Romney will give you a free piece of coal for Christmas to stuff in your pipe and smoke Mr. Inhofe. Coal causes cancer, emphysema, heart disease, endocrine and reproductive system failure. It raises health care costs -- and causes terrible suffering. Coal combustion products hit our bodies like false hormones - endocrine disrupters. But you don't care. Put a million people to work insulating homes to R-60 and we wont need that energy. Put a million people to work installing solar panels and your 118 poison jobs won't mean anything. My grandfather worked in the coal mines of West Virginia and died young from cancer. You can never make up for what I lost.
Mitt Romney made the coal miners stand behind him during his photo op. That's kind of how he would like to have control over the American citizens. I don't trust the guy. He's the man wh would be king. King of the gutter rats.
The EPA regulations and labor unions have caused the death of the heavy American industrial base. Unions have caused jobs to be out-sourced, and replaced with service sector work. Giving in to tree huggers and union teachers are part of an irreversible trend. Obama does not care about the future of the USA. He has his pie.
Yes, let's re-fund Solyndra instead... and we need more food and feed turned into ethanol, too.
Keep losing money and calories on every unit, but make it up volume ( read subsidies).
Coal miners aren't on the redistribution list, probably because they prefer hard, honest work to welfare.
This is just another battleground in the Obama war on business, the private sector, and taxpayers.
The guy who pledged to make us less dependent on foreign oil is doing everything he can to destroy energy generation in the U.S.
It's not just coal - he has killed a pipeline that would bring us oil from Canada, he has stopped new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico while sending billions of taxpayer dollars to Mexico and Brazil so that they can INCREASE their drilling in the Gulf. He has prevented fracking on any government lands. He has denied drilling permits in Alaska.
With job-killing policies like this, it's no wonder the unemployment rate stays above 8%.
With a war on energy like this, it's no wonder the price of a gallon of gas has more than doubled since Obama was elected.
Romney will reverse this war on jobs and the war on energy.
More jobs will be created, as well as more taxpayers.
Unemployment will go down, the cost of a gallon of gas will go down, the cost to heat your home will go down, government expenses to support the unemployed will go down, and we will start to work our way out of the economic disaster that Obama has put us in.
Job types come and go. Coal is no longer needed. Wind. solar, and now tidal are cheaper to capitalize, easier to build on small and medium scales, and budget cost steady.
That is why towns across America are building their own homegrown energy.
Any American town that is not looking into cutting their energy costs by adding a clean energy steady cost revenue stream in addition to adding 'local' jobs are wasting money and time.
It's easy to understand but not forgive the republicans for fighting for the continuation of an expensive, toxic fossil fuel at the behest of a corporate donors and against Americans who are doing it the old way. They are building it themselves.
Between fighting against clean energy and veterans job bills, I'm not sure what is making more angry with the republicans of today.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Coal-fired power plants will face pressure and in some cases closure despite a Republican energy plan favorable to the industry and a court victory against new environmental rules.
As many as one-sixth of U.S. coal-fired power plants would close within eight years and be replaced by natural gas, according to an Energy Department estimate.
Coal is a loser long term, even without externalities priced in.
Coal was for when we didn't know better.
You are over generalizing. I know the energy business as well. Duke Energy alone is closing three coal power plants because of EPA regulations. Plants they would otherwise keep open but for the regulations. The price of natural gas will increase over time. all
Wind, solar and tidal are all non-dispatchable. In layman's terms, when the wind doesn't blow, a wind turbine produces no electricity.
Coal is a big part of America's path towards energy independence.
Working around 'when the wind doesn't blow' takes a little preparation but can easily be done.
Energy storage technologies are already being tested for commercialization. Smart energy grids will distribute energy more efficiently.
Tidal and offshore wind have already been calculated to be able to easily provide energy, day and night, for the entire East Coast states.
Coal power plants along with gas and nuclear consume massive amounts of precious fresh water. Wind and tidal use none and an equivalent solar plant would use 1/10 fresh water.
Considering the drought we just endured, making sure our fresh clean water goes to people and farming first in the future should be on our politicians minds.
But that technology is several times more expensive than coal. Electric generation is but one aspect. Demand, delivery and price are also considerations. You are needlessly advocating the doubling and tripling of electric rates. Affordable green energy is several generations away still. Forcing it down peoples throats and depressing private commerce through higher energy costs makes no sense. I love coal. The US has a vast supply of it. I say mine it, burn it and prosper.
No coal. It's too dirty.
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