Coal

http://www.nytimes.com/

In April 2005, President George W. Bush hailed “clean coal” as a key to “greater energy independence,” pledging $2 billion in research funds that promised a new golden age for America‘s most abundant energy resource.

But a decade later, the United States coal industry is reeling as never before in its history, the victim of new environmental regulations, intensifying attacks by activists, collapsing coal prices, and — above all — the rise of cheap alternative fuels, especially natural gas.

This week President Obama slammed the industry with tougher-than-expected rules from the Environmental Protection Agency limiting power plant carbon emissions, which will accelerate an already huge shift from coal to natural gas and other alternatives. “Clean coal” remains an expensive and thus far impractical pipe dream. Coal is the world’s biggest source of carbon emissions by far and the leading culprit in global warming. Coal advocates like Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky senator and Republican majority leader, have accused the president of an out-and-out “war on coal.”

But it’s collapsing prices and heavy debt loads that are driving the industry into bankruptcy.

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http://news.yahoo.com/

Kentucky was on track to meet an earlier proposed target in the Clean Power Plan. Now the state, which has lost thousands of coal-mining jobs in recent years, plans to fight the final, more stringent rule in the courts.

It is a tense time in Kentucky. The Environmental Protection Agency has just come out with its final rule on reducing carbon emissions – the strongest step ever taken to counter climate change in the United States – and this coal state is reeling.

“We are shocked at the difference in the proposal we were given to work on last year, versus the final rule announced Monday,” said Dick Brown, spokesman for the state’s Energy and Environment Cabinet, in an e-mail. The new target is a 27 percent increase in the amount of CO2 emissions that Kentucky’s power plants have to reduce by 2030, he says.

In many states, residents may be wondering how the EPA’s Clean Power Plan will affect their energy bills, for example. But in states like Kentucky, the new carbon rule arguably hits even closer to home. The Bluegrass State is America’s third-largest coal producer, and it gets more than 90 percent of its electricity from coal. Even before the carbon rule was finalized, the state had lost thousands of coal-mining jobs in the past two years alone.

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http://www.bloombergview.com/

Critics of the Environmental Protection Agency’s new Clean Power Plan are describing it in apocalyptic terms. But much of what they believe about the plan — that it will destroy the coal industry, kill jobs and raise costs for consumers — is wrong. And it’s important to understand why.

The overblown political rhetoric about the plan tends to obscure the market reality that the coal industry has been in steady decline for a decade, partly as a result of the natural gas boom, but mostly because consumers are demanding cleaner air and action on climate change.

Communities across the U.S. have led the way in persuading utilities to close dirty old coal plants and transition to cleaner forms of energy. The Sierra Club’s grass-roots Beyond Coal campaign (which Bloomberg Philanthropies funds) has helped close or phase out more than 200 coal plants over the past five years.

The primary reason for the public revolt against coal is simple: It causes death, disease and debilitating respiratory problems. A decade ago, coal pollution was killing 13,000 people a year. Today, the number is down to 7,500, which means that more than 5,000 Americans are living longer, healthier lives each year thanks to cleaner power.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/

The Obama administration will formally adopt an ambitious regulation for cutting greenhouse-gas pollution on Monday, requiring every state to reduce emissions from coal-burning power plants and putting the country on a course that could change the way millions of Americans get their electricity.

A retooled version of the administration’s Clean Power Plan, first proposed a year ago, will seek to accelerate the shift to renewable energy while setting tougher goals for slashing carbon emissions blamed for global warming, according to administration officials briefed on the details.

The new plan sets a goal of cutting carbon pollution from power plants by 32 percent by the year 2030, compared with 2005 levels — a 9 percent jump from the previous target of 30 percent — while rewarding states and utility companies that move quickly to expand their investment in solar and wind power.

Many states will face tougher requirements for lowering greenhouse-gas emissions under the revised plan.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/

When coal was king, it fueled more than half of the nation’s electricity. It fired up American industry and powered an ever-growing variety of household appliances and electronics. And American presidential hopefuls paid homage to coal, courting mine owners and miners whose unionized ranks once numbered more than 400,000.

Barack Obama was no exception. As a state legislator in 2004 and again as a U.S. senator, he supported proposals for huge federal subsidies to turn coal into motor fuel and ease America’s reliance on oil imports. “With the right technological innovations, coal has the potential to be a cleaner-burning, domestic alternative to imported oil,” Obama said in June 2007.

All of that has changed. On Monday, the Obama administration takes on the coal industry with the final version of rules it has dubbed the Clean Power Plan, a complex scheme designed to reduce, on a state-by-state basis, the amount of greenhouse gases the nation’s electric power sector emits. The main target: coal.

Today, more people in the United States work jobs installing solar panels than work in the coal industry.

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