Bacon's Rebellion

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Facts, Reality and the “War On Coal”

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by

Peter Galuszka
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Coal ship.1By Peter Galuszka

Now that the Obama Administration is finally getting ready to set long-overdue regulations on limiting carbon dioxide at new coal-fired electricity plants, Big Coal and its allies are again beating the “War On Coal” drums.

The rules, which will apply only to new coal-fired plants, will shut down the industry, kill jobs, etc., some claim. It’s basically the same refrain we heard from the Mitt Romney camp a year ago featuring the boss from Ohio-based Murray Energy who ordered his employees to attend a pro-GOP rally.

Funny that in this morning’s The Virginian-Pilot, there’s news that Norfolk Southern railroad set a new record yesterday its biggest coal ship loading ever. It was 168,977 net tons of coking coal aboard the Maltese-flagged dry carrier, the Negonego. Like most of the coal at Norfolk  Southern’s Lambert’s Point pier, the coal is bound for an overseas steel mill, this one in China.

The news brought a comment from one “Chriss33” who decried the industry’s “lies.” Other commenters said that power plants are filthy if they use coal. Both gubernatorial candidates Ken Cuccinelli and Terry McAuliffe have jumped on the coal bandwagon criticizing Obama’s green rules and their impact on Virginia jobs.

Truth Squad time. Here goes:

(1)    While it is true that fracked natural gas has cut production of coal used to power U.S. electricity plants, the global market for metallurgical coal to make steel remains robust if somewhat weakened by slowing Asian economies. Met coal ends up in skyscrapers, high speed rails, cars and so on.

(2)    Coking coal has nothing to do with power-plant air pollution, here, in China or anywhere. That is because it is not used in power plants. It is used to make coke that is used by steel mills. Granted, these pollute a lot, too. But environmentalists and coal boosters alike always confuse the types of coal and the very different markets. The U.S. EPA does not regulate Chinese steel mills or coal-fired power plants.

(3)    A significant portion of the coal mined in southwestern Virginia, southern West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky is met coal. Almost all of it is shipped overseas to foreign steel mills. That specific coal is not affected by American power plant rules by the EPA. Period.

(4)    Cuccinelli and to some extent McAuliffe talk about Obama’s EPA rules killing Virginia coal jobs. Hot flash to all. Virginia’s coal industry has been shrinking for the past 20 years. Employment in 1991 was 10,055. It is now about 4,000. That is about the size of the workforce at Philip Morris USA’s Richmond cigarette factory. It is about 0.09 percent of the total 4.1 million civilian labor force in Virginia.  So, if a mine lays off 200 miners in Dickenson County, that’s bad news locally, but it is insignificant for the overall state economy.

It would be nice if people could get their facts right when they talk about coal.

Note: The writer is author of “Thunder on the Mountain: Death at Massey and the Dirty Secrets Behind Big Coal,” St. Martin’s Press, 2012.

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25 responses to “Facts, Reality and the “War On Coal””

  1. Breckinridge Avatar
    Breckinridge

    Agreed. Jobs have been departing the coal industry for decades. The market for metallurgic coal from Virginia should not be dampened by the regulations but you inadvertently make another key point — EPA regulations that clamp down coal burning power plants in the US won’t have any impact at all on coal burning power plants in the rest of the world. So both the proponents and opponents of EPA’s new rules are ignoring reality for political gain. If the global warming alarmists are right, the Chinese and Indians are going to do us all in anyway.

    There is no question that the goal of the rules is to make it all but impossible to build any more coal-fired power plants in this country. I spend zero time worrying about CO2 in the atmosphere (as I exhale it every breath) but I will lose no sleep over a move away from coal to cleaner power sources. Even with all the scrubbers and better technologies, it is a dirty power source compared to any other alternative.

  2. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    the coal that powerplants like comes from the west and unlike eastern coal is low-sulfur.

    re: carbon-dioxide as a pollutant

    it’s all about concentration. I cannot believe that perfectly intelligent people do not understand that even things that are benign or even good for you are NOT good for you if they are too concentrated.

    If you breathe higher than normal concentrations of nitrogen, or carbon dioxide, etc.. you health will be harmed. why is that not obvious?

    try breathing what comes out of your tailpipe in higher concentrations than you’d get by just standing behind your car outside your garage. Put your car inside your garage, close the door and try breathing the very same thing and see what happens to you.

    You can actually DIE from drinking too much water even.

    Water intoxication

    Are folks really not that smart on this?

    re: alarmists and China, developing nations… we have to START somewhere and show some LEADERSHIP in demonstrating that economies CAN expand and prosper without polluting more than we should.

    If we could actually develop safer and more cost effect NUKES – we’d be leading and making major contributions – as well as benefiting our own economy by creating jobs!

  3. billsblots Avatar
    billsblots

    Thanks for the information, but I would like to read a little more. For instance, what portion of Virginia/WV/KY coal DOES go to power plants, how will that be affected, etc. The President did campaign on his plan to make it so difficult to build a coal fired power plant that “you could build it but you would go out of business”, so that intent at the highest level of national government is clear. I always laugh when I see the attempt to portray some entity as evil by slipping the adjective “Big” in front of it. Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Food. By golly, if it says Big in front of it, it must be evil and stealing money from the little guy, not providing thousands of jobs.

    It was clear years ago and even more so now that increases in levels of the essential, life-giving nutrient CO2 have not resulted in steady warming of the atmosphere, as we now top 400 parts per million and see what even the abysmal IPCC finally categorizes as a “hiatus” in global warming. Evidently it takes 15 years of not warming to finally be classified as a “hiatus”. Remember, the Gore Warmers ten years ago insisted petulantly that the human race could stop all production of CO2 immediately, yet the upward trajectory of warming would still proceed for 100 years, causing a rise of 4 degrees in the atmosphere and a rise of 4, 10, 100 feet of the ocean levels (take your pick). The IPCC and the Warmers ignore what all of us who studied meteorology learned as the first indisputable law of any planet’s climate, it is most affected by Insolation (incoming solar radiation).

    As has always been the case, the Warmer computer models have failed miserably and are wildly inaccurate. This is not a surprise, computer models are written with premeditation skewed to confirm the theories of the model writer. However, they did serve their purpose of creating fodder for mass media hysteria and another political weapon for “Big Government”. And that matters more than truth, apparently.

  4. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    Billsblot,
    A general rule of thumb nationally is that 80 percent of US coal production is thermal and 20 percent is met. In the Central Appalachians, the met side is higher but varies since the coal can be used for either purpose.

  5. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    KEY INDICATORS of Global Warming

  6. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    Here’s the problem:

    All the various Hurricane Sandy computer model predictions

    now tell me that all of them are wrong and it’s a futile exercise that does not predict reality.

  7. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    let’s try the link again:

    All the Various Hurricane Sandy prediction Models

    Now the point is – tell me after looking at the link that since all the models are incorrect that the whole effort is corrupt and untrustworthy and that “consensus” essentially means a conspiracy

  8. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    Hurricane Sandy Computer Models

  9. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    All the various Hurricane Sandy computer model predictions

  10. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    Everything you write is correct. However, you gloss over the critical point. Insofar as EPA regulations put coal at a competitive disadvantage with other fuel sources and make it impractical to open new coal-fired power plants, the regs will dampen the demand for Virginia steam coal. Yes, Virginia’s coal industry would be hurting no matter what. But the regs will make it all the harder for the industry to recover.

  11. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    Jim,
    For someone who has covered Virginia coal, you do not quite get it. Getting rid of Obama’s regs is not going to make the state’s coal industry magically come back. You had federal money spends. The only thing that is going to make Virginia’s tiny and waning coal industry come back is if the feds come through with loans or subsidies for carbon capture and other technologies. That would be hateful to someone like you. The free market (in the name of natural gas) you so much love has doomed the Virginia coal industry. Accept it.
    If they can export met coal they will. Nothing’s stopping them.

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      Jim said: “The regs will make it all the harder for the industry to recover.”

      Peter said: “You do not quite get it. Getting rid of Obama’s regs is not going to make the state’s coal industry magically come back.”

      Jim did not say the state’s coal industry would “magically” come back, did he? Jim said the regs would make it harder to recover.

  12. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    The hits on the EPA are interesting.

    For example, one can make a similar argument that the EPA “destroyed” the insecticide (Kepone) industry on the Appomatox and James – putting workers out of work and preventing an industry from contributing to the economy.

    Just pick whatever industry you want to demonize the EPA for killing jobs and companies.

    Never heard JIm Bacon talk about the EPA putting the Ethyl company or American Cyanamid Company, Cytec Industries on the Piney River in Va or Avtex Fibers in Front Royal or

    How come we only talk about the EPA in the context of coal and not these other issues in Virginia where jobs and companies were also “destroyed”?

    Virginia has a long history of allowing companies to damage the environment and almost never lifted a finger until the EPA got involved and when the EPA did get involved … jobs and companies were “destroyed” in the name of a cleaner environment.

    So all of that is now conveniently forgotten in the current demonization of the EPA.

    Somewhere, somehow, we ought to have a more balanced discussion of the merits of the EPA with regard to Virginia – beyond the routine right-wing sound-bite variety.

    Virginia does have about 30 superfund sites – and in each case – jobs were lost by the actions of the nasty govt thuggery of the EPA…. (sic).

    I suppose had we killed the EPA as the right wing wants – those superfund sites would still be producing jobs for Virginia – right?

  13. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    Jim,
    I am getting worried about you. First, Virginia’s coal is NEVER going to recover in any appreciable way.
    Its best coal was mined years ago. Seams and thinner and harder to get to. Deep mines are very expensive. Even mountaintop removal — as utterly destructive as that is — can be expensive. You need to reach certain price points in what is being paid per ton.
    I went to a Platt’s coal conference in Florida in March. It was very clear that Central Appalachian (Virginia) coal now has price points too high to do much. With natural gas and old and new regs it is being priced out of the market.
    This is not to say that coal in this country is dead — far from it. Powder River Coal and even coal from the Illinois Basin has better price points than Central Ap coal. Pennsylvania coal is even cheaper to mine.
    Now you can slice and dice words all you want to fit some kind of boosterish, conservative viewpoint. But you can’t word your way past specific economic facts.
    Why is this so hard for you to understand?
    Meanwhile, some enlightened people are trying to prepare the Central Ap coalfields for a non-coal future. Actually, they have been trying for years since the only way that it is going to work is if prices per ton rise dramatically and you can beat back cheap fracked gas and have enough money to pay for new coal plants with carbon capture and other control devices. I fail to see why keeping a bunch of old, coughing, polluting coal plants from the 1950s and 1960s is somehow going to help Virginia coal “recover.”
    Would you keep a 1950s car on the road just to preserve some jobs at antiquating factories in Michigan? Hell no, we’d get a big lecture from you about the “magic of the market” and the need to modernize (but in a Smart Growth) way. I guess we could keep the old factories if workers walked or rode bikes to their jobs. Right?

  14. nsdalfan Avatar
    nsdalfan

    That was a typical Liberal opinion, for the last line said people need to know the facts about coal before speaking is highly ironic. You Mr. Galuszka are a perfect example of this. These met coal areas are not affected by the EPA, how come we have 1000s in our region who are without jobs?? We HAVE steam coal and have provided it for years to POWER PLANTS, but not so much lately!! Overseas production is not keeping jobs here so don’t even try and use you holier than thou intelligence because it really boils down to ignorance. You want facts stop reading other peoples opinions and come to our region and see all of our employment. I work for Norfolk Southern so I know about pier 6 all of this coal is coming from Penn. and not where I’m from so get your facts straight or don’t speak again!

  15. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    Pennsylvania, huh? Must make for some interesting rail connections.

  16. nsdalfan Avatar
    nsdalfan

    Not sure what you meant by that remark, but I remembered that you don’t know what you’re talking about so that makes it ok. I’ve read some of your responses and you keep bolstering my argument. First and not in order but nothing is stopping them from selling overseas. Well Obama’s new world order has proposed tariffs on the coal shipped to china and others. They also make it very difficult for any company to open new mines, for they are denied permits. War on coal! Gas is so much cheaper to extract. Reality is since you used this word that the EPA does not regulate the gas mining so all is cheaper while water tables are destroyed. Healthier? War on coal. The seams are getting smaller?? Please quit reading someone else’s words and get real. There are seams around here that can be accessed by going straight down and can windfall for years. Experience teaches you this from being around it all your life, and you don’t have anything else in your area (employment wise) to distract you. Carbon capture? Hmm how about coal gasification? Been done for years by Eastman in kingsport tn, and by the way can also be produced to a biodiesel fuel also. So there is no way to rebound? Please get with knowledge it is your friend not your competitor. Yes you were right about one thing, if there are layoffs in Dickenson, wise, Lee, or Buchanan counties it doesn’t affect the rest of the state. That is why the state as far as politicians are concerned stops at Roanoke. You don’t care about the people of far southwest Virginia, it’s obvious and you have the guts to think people should side with your liberal we are in the right you’re wrong attitude? Democrats vow that they look out for the little guy, but I’m turn to get their agenda through they are willing to step on the throats of others. We in the future ghost towns of the areas you mentioned are people even though we are counted differently by you thanks..

  17. nsdalfan Avatar
    nsdalfan

    Not sure what you meant by that remark, but I remembered that you don’t know what you’re talking about so that makes it ok. I’ve read some of your responses and you keep bolstering my argument. First and not in order but nothing is stopping them from selling overseas. Well Obama’s new world order has proposed tariffs on the coal shipped to china and others. They also make it very difficult for any company to open new mines, for they are denied permits. War on coal! Gas is so much cheaper to extract. Reality is since you used this word that the EPA does not regulate the gas mining so all is cheaper while water tables are destroyed. Healthier? War on coal. The seams are getting smaller?? Please quit reading someone else’s words and get real. There are seams around here that can be accessed by going straight down and can windfall for years. Experience teaches you this from being around it all your life, and you don’t have anything else in your area (employment wise) to distract you. Carbon capture? Hmm how about coal gasification? Been done for years by Eastman in kingsport tn, and by the way can also be produced to a biodiesel fuel also. So there is no way to rebound? Please get with knowledge it is your friend not your competitor. Yes you were right about one thing, if there are layoffs in Dickenson, wise, Lee, or Buchanan counties it doesn’t affect the rest of the state. That is why the state as far as politicians are concerned stops at Roanoke. You don’t care about the people of far southwest Virginia, it’s obvious and you have the guts to think people should side with your liberal we are in the right you’re wrong attitude? Democrats vow that they look out for the little guy, but I’m turn to get their agenda through they are willing to step on the throats of others. We in the future ghost towns of the areas you mentioned are people even though we are counted differently by you thanks..

  18. nsdalfan Avatar
    nsdalfan

    Not sure what you meant by that remark, but I remembered that you don’t know what you’re talking about so that makes it ok. I’ve read some of your responses and you keep bolstering my argument. First and not in order but nothing is stopping them from selling overseas. Well Obama’s new world order has proposed tariffs on the coal shipped to china and others. They also make it very difficult for any company to open new mines, for they are denied permits. War on coal! Gas is so much cheaper to extract. Reality is since you used this word that the EPA does not regulate the gas mining so all is cheaper while water tables are destroyed. Healthier? War on coal. The seams are getting smaller?? Please quit reading someone else’s words and get real. There are seams around here that can be accessed by going straight down and can windfall for years. Experience teaches you this from being around it all your life, and you don’t have anything else in your area (employment wise) to distract you. Carbon capture? Hmm how about coal gasification? Been done for years by Eastman in kingsport tn, and by the way can also be produced to a biodiesel fuel also. So there is no way to rebound? Please get with knowledge it is your friend not your competitor. Yes you were right about one thing, if there are layoffs in Dickenson, wise, Lee, or Buchanan counties it doesn’t affect the rest of the state. That is why the state as far as politicians are concerned stops at Roanoke. You don’t care about the people of far southwest Virginia, it’s obvious and you have the guts to think people should side with your liberal we are in the right you’re wrong attitude? Democrats vow that they look out for the little guy, but I’m turn to get their agenda through they are willing to step on the throats of others. We in the future ghost towns of the areas you mentioned are people even though we are counted differently by you thanks..

  19. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    Nsdalfan,
    Obama putting exports on coal? Interesting that 2012 saw a record in U.S. coal exports, some of it to China. Details, please.

    Why would NS rail met coal all the way from Pennsylvania to Norfolk? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to ship it through Baltimore, which is closer?

    As for me, I have been in Southwest Virginia a bit. From 2010 to 2012 I made many trips there and to southern W.Va. and Eastern Kentucky for my book. In a previous life I was Markets Editor for Coal Week, an industry newsletter and traveled the U.S. visiting coal mines from the Powder River to North Dakota to the Appalachians. I spent part of my childhood in West Virginia in the 1960s where I got to witness lax regulation of the coal industry first-hand.

    So I have at least a basic understanding of the problems. And, BTW, ask yourself one question, (if you are truly from the coalfields yourself). Poverty has been endemic there for more than a century. How come? Why would that be if the region has incredible coal wealth? Could it be that the coal companies and railroads take the coal out of the area and put very little back in terms of taxes, true jobs generation, support for schools, health care, etc?

    Maybe you should buy my book. It’s available in hard back and e-version.

  20. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    I meant put tariffs on coal exports.

  21. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    I’m pretty sure only Congress can put tariffs on exports. West Virginia allows mountain-top removal to get at coal seams as does Maryland. I’ve been around PA and cannot recall seeing open pits… does Pennsylvania allow them or is only deep mining allowed?

    Many rivers in West Virginia run with acid in them. I do not recall many in Pennsylvania that way – is Pennsylvania stricter on environmental rules?

  22. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    LarryG

    Strip mining has been around since the 1930s throughout the Appalachian coal fields, from Pennsylvania south to Alabama. It really picked up in the 1950s and typially involved chopping out coal form the sides of hills with highwalls of no more than 100 feet or so. The overburden was dumped over the side of the hill and little was pushed back. No one forced the coal operators to do so. They paid big money to legislators to leave them alone. In germany, by contrast, regulators forced strip miners to take out each increment of earth step by step and put it back in the same order. Back in Appalachia, you would side brown gashes running for miles and miles creating lots of pollution runoff and helping floods, etc.
    It wasn’t addressed until the 1977 surface mine reclamation act which required the hills to be sort of put back together. In time, a lot of those brown gashes disappeared. But back then, like now, reactionary Neanderthals like some on this blog decried federal regulation. They WANT denuded hills. That’s why I am rather disdainful of their compplaints.
    Mountaintop removal didn’t really take off until the 1990s. It is stripping on a much vaster scale. The stuff is supposed to be pushed back, but it is really hard to push back a mountain when it no longer exists. A lot of the spill is allowed in watersheds, creating more pollution nightmares.
    I’m not sure Pa. has mountaintop removal, although it has had and still has traditional stripping. I don’t think Md does. There are plenty of mines in southern W Va., Eastern Kentucky and some in SW Va. Maybe Tenn.
    One again. I have heard all this stuff so often it makes me sick. As a kid I used to play on un-reclaimed strip mines and remember all those reddish-orange lakes and the bones of the dead animals at the water’s edge.
    War on Coal! You bectha! Even back then. And West Virginia was just as impoverished then as now.

  23. nsdalfan Avatar
    nsdalfan

    Ok so NS sends export coal to Pier 6 because of the 9+million dollars they put into it last year which in turn set the record this year. The coal loaded in shire oaks Penn because they load up to 260 per day and ship it directly to ports. They also put lots of money into the rail line in Penn just for this increase. But there is a port in Baltimore, and the bottom line is we are still not reaping any rewards from this at all. Am I from the coalfields? Hmmmy Grandfather worked for Stonega coal and coke later Westmoreland, my Father worked for Westmoreland, and now I for NS. There are lots of poverty stricken areas all over this state and nation, but I haven’t been one to suffer from. Nor has my family either. This area is dependent on coal, what do you mean coal mines and rrs doesn’t support this area? It has for over 100 years, no factories or industries will ever build anything in the limited space between these mountains! So if you really have been to this area you should know this, and you book needs a little tweaking. I’m here I see it everyday the Gov. has turned it’s back on it’s people here. Not coal, not coal mines, not Railroads! Now strip mining in previous post you never commented on the gas fracking why is that? Or the gasification, or any solutions to what this area is going to do after we lose this war on coal. Oh yeah no-one really cares. Did I say that already??

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    […] Facts, Reality and the “War On Coal” – Now that the Obama Administration is finally getting ready to set long-overdue regulations on limiting carbon dioxide at new coal-fired electricity plants, Big Coal and its allies are again beating the “War On Coal … Ohio-based Murray Energy who … […]

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