The Last Coal Tycoon – Chris Cline – by Christopher Helman (Forbes Magazine – December 2017)

https://www.forbes.com/

Dark days ahead for coal? Don’t tell that to billionaire Chris Cline, who’s convinced that the dirtiest fuel still has a bright future and is building what he believes will be the last mine standing.

The masseuse felt the broken bones and the scars and asked Chris Cline what he did for a living. Cline said he was in the energy business. What kind of energy?, she wondered. Maybe solar panels or windmills? No, not that, he said. You’re not a fracker, are you? No, not that either. Then what? “I own coal mines,” said Cline.

Without a word she stopped working on him and left the room. He waited a while, but she didn’t return. Cline won’t name the resort (“I might want to go back there”). And the scars? From his years underground in Appalachian mines, where the coal seams have been worked so thin it’s like “crawling under a table all day.” Cuts on his back from a mine’s ceiling “felt like insect bites.”

Cline, 59, is one of the most archaic and unpopular specimens of capitalist: the coal tycoon. He doesn’t mind people not liking him. He knows that coal fuels 40% of the world’s power needs. “People deserve the cheapest energy they can get,” he says. “Tell the poor in India and China that they don’t deserve to have reliable, affordable electricity.”

Coal is far from dead. Global demand has dipped because of America’s shale-gas boom and tighter regulations in China, yet it remains 50% above its level in 2000, at 7.2 billion tons per year, according to the International Energy Agency. Even factoring in a carbon tax of $30 per ton, coal can compete on price with natural gas and renewables.

And Chris Cline, relying on operating efficiencies that he has honed over nearly 40 years of running his own mines, intends to be the last man standing in the industry, supplying low-cost coal from Canada to energy-hungry consumers around the world.

For the rest of this article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2017/12/19/the-last-coal-tycoon-chris-cline/#39657b3b6097