By most accounts, mining – and coal in particular – is under attack, and wielding the legislative bat, as it were, is the administration of President Barack Obama.

A 2008 promise to “bankrupt” the coal industry has not exactly come to fruition, but the events of the past four years, and especially the past 12 months, certainly makes it feel that way.

The balancing act of politics with coal, or imbalance depending on the time in history, is not a new struggle. Coal has been produced in abundance for generations, through many cycles of feast and famine across the major end-use industries of power generation and steelmaking. Its primary appeal, back as far as the Industrial Revolution, has been its availability and cost compared to other available fuels.

However, coal – from how it is mined to how it is burned – has, to some, progressively become the proverbial 800-pound gorilla in the room. Everyone knows it is there, and it is a force no one can ignore, but no one wants to recognise its presence.

Despite everything, from booms to busts to changing regulations to environmental firestorms, coal has remained resilient. That attitude and mission to keep our place in the nation’s and world’s energy mixes is currently being tested again, and it is what will hopefully help us weather the storm.

The ‘bankrupt’ promise

Much of coal’s current landscape, at least politically, stems from president Obama. While he peppered his campaign speeches with statements that coal must be a key part of America’s energy future and that he had a commitment to affordable, reliable electricity, the tune of the song changed after the Oath of Office was taken.

Instead of urging its use, a rally to “bankrupt coal” began in an effort to knock the fossil fuel from its place in the nation’s energy plan.

That anti-coal pushback has done nothing but gain momentum during this administration, particularly since the official start to the next election has gotten underway.

Obama is seeking re-election to continue his progress of “change” against a much more coal-accepting Mitt Romney.

At the heart of the matter are two major issues, the first being Obama’s refusal to include coal in his “All of the Above” energy plan. His 2012 State of the Union address included not one mention of the resource, a point not lost on those who wave the flag for the coal industry proudly each day.

By omitting the fuel that creates the electricity for nearly half of the US, according to Kentucky Coal Association president Bill Bissett in an interview with Coal USA earlier this year, Obama’s refusal to even say the word coal “speaks to … his strong belief to move this country away from coal by any means necessary”

Bissett said the best word to describe today’s coal industry was “uncertainty” and that the commander in chief’s administration, including the EPA, had been consistent in its push to slow down coal production.

This, he said, had left the industry in somewhat of “a paralyzed state”

“I’ll give him credit: he’s been clear in his intent,” Bissett said.

“His pep talk to the EPA shows his support to every anti-coal initiative that this federal government is doing.”

Pennsylvania Coal Association’s Josie Gasky also told Coal USA that diversification was integral to the nation’s future and energy independence and ignoring coal was “short-sighted”

“[To] achieve energy security and economic prosperity, we need to use all our natural resources – no one source should be killed to promote others,” she said.

“Not mentioning coal shows a lack of understanding as to the major role coal mining plays in keeping electricity costs affordable for families as well as businesses and creating more sustainable, well-paying jobs that allow citizens to invest in this country’s economy.”

She added it was also short-sighted to believe US manufacturing could rebuild and the country could achieve true energy security without the use of the largest natural resources in a large role.

“Failure to publicly recognize this major role shows a lack of respect for the hard work [of] our grandparents and great-grandparents in making this country the greatest nation on earth,” Gasky said.

A change of heart?

Interestingly, as more industry supporters banded together and became more vocal about coal’s attributes and voters began to speak ever more loudly at the polling booths, Obama’s position on coal quietly changed.

Many attributed it to a shocking May loss in the primary elections for West Virginia – the second largest coal-producing state in the US – to none other than Keith Judd, a convicted felon serving a 210-month sentence in a Texas penitentiary for extortion. Judd took a staggering 41% of the vote in what has historically been a mostly Democratic state.

At the same time, Republican representative and industry advocate Ed Whitfield said at a hearing on electricity reliability rules in May that the president also had a very telling omission on his online presence for his “Approach to Energy Independence” plan.

“There’s one glaring absence and that has to be coal,” Whitfield said, pointing out that Obama promoted the advancement of other resources including oil, natural gas, fuel efficiency, biofuels, wind, solar, and nuclear power.

“Many of us get upset about that because it has a tremendous economic impact on our country, it provides a lot of jobs, and it makes us competitive in the global marketplace because coal is still a valuable resource.”

Whitfield drew attention to a section of Obama’s campaign web site which had all mentions of coal missing.

“Coal is still a valuable resource … and yet this administration has been open in the business of putting coal out of business,” he said.

“To not even mention coal as an important energy sector is unbelievable to me.”

Within days, and without so much as a peep from his campaign, Obama quietly added “clean coal” to the plan on his web site.

“President Obama has set a 10-year goal to develop and deploy cost-effective clean coal technology,” the site proclaimed.

“The Recovery Act invested substantially in carbon capture and sequestration research, including 22 projects across four different areas of carbon capture-and-storage research and development.”

According to political blog The Hill, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told the media that clean coal had been an “essential part” of Obama’s energy strategy.

However, the industry as a whole has viewed the action as just another strategic move in the chess game that is the politics of coal.

American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity vice president Evan Tracey responded positively to the change, but urged follow-through.

“We’re glad the Obama campaign finally included clean coal in its ‘all of the above’ energy strategy, but the president’s commitment to coal needs to be more than just a talking point.”

Whitfield, who supposedly had helped to spur the change, called the addition of clean coal to the plan merely a symbolic gesture.

“At least the president is finally acknowledging our most abundant energy resource, coal,” he said.

“However, I’m skeptical he will actually do anything to draw on this resource.”

EPA’s target on the back of coal

The other primary issue at hand in the political storm that is coal’s future is the role being played by Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA’s fight against coal is decades long, and up until the late 1990s its hand in making significant waves across coal has been heavy (such as the Clean Air Act) but, at times, also infrequent. It was an interest in regulating emissions from coal-fired power plants that was the talk of the industry in the 1990s, and while things changed, coal continued on its path with the new regulations at the forefront of its mind.

Fast forward to 2012, and the tension between the coal industry and the EPA is palpable. The federal agency announced that it had finalized its mercury and air toxic standards. By February large utility FirstEnergy revealed nine of its coal-fired generation facilities would close due to the rules. While many others followed suit, FirstEnergy’s decision made news in part because it had invested so much in environmental protection efforts over previous years to be in compliance with the 1970 Clean Air Act.

One industry group, the Teamsters Rail Conference, urged the agency to re-examine the laws that consequently put a negative push on railroad workers.

TRC president Dennis Pierce, in response to the final rules, said in a March 16 letter to Obama that the regulations could have a “potentially devastating impact” on the rail worker members of its divisions, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division.

“Nearly one in five railroad jobs are related to coal haulage,” Pierce, also president of the BLET, says in the letter.

“If these jobs are lost, it is not likely that new business generated on our nation’s railroads will ever make up for the loss of coal.”

The news did nothing short of turn the industry on its ear, as according to EPA statistics about 40% of active coal-fired power plants are not equipped to comply with the requirements.

The storm grew worse in late March, when EPA administrator Lisa Jackson released the agency’s first carbon pollution standard for emissions from new coal-fired plants.

The measure will force facilities to institute carbon-capture technology.

As existing plants are already being modified to meet the other EPA mandates for emissions, they will not be part of the CAA planned standard.

Additionally, power facilities with building permits in place, or with plans to commence construction within a year of the effective date of any resulting regulations, also will be exempt, along with non-continental US territories and Hawaii.

The EPA said the proposal was “a path forward for new technologies” that would allow them to be deployed at future facilities to burn coal with less carbon pollution.

“Today we’re taking a common-sense step to reduce pollution in our air, protect the planet for our children, and move us into a new era of American energy,” Jackson said at the time.

“Right now there are no limits to the amount of carbon pollution that future power plants will be able to put into our skies – and the health and economic threats of a changing climate continue to grow.

“We’re putting in place a standard that relies on the use of clean, American-made technology to tackle a challenge that we can’t leave to our kids and grandkids.”

She said no all-encompassing national limit for carbon pollution emissions levels existed.

The EPA’s proposed standards could be met by power facilities by burning different fossil fuels, including widespread use of natural gas technologies, or coal with carbon reduction technologies in place.

“EPA does not project additional cost for industry to comply with this standard,” the agency said, a statement that goes against a growing trend of coal-fired power plant closures that will likely gather momentum with the announcement of the mandates.

The proposal is still in a public comment period, where it will remain through June 25 (as of press time).

Opposition to the announcement went into high gear within hours of the announcement and continues in force today.

One of the first to comment was coal advocate Earl Ray Tomblin, governor of coal-rich West Virginia, who called the move “an attack on coal”

“This move by the EPA can lead to only one conclusion – the Obama administration is trying to end the use of coal as we know it,” he said.

“This regulation will devastate West Virginia and our region by reducing jobs and unnecessarily increasing the cost of power for our citizens. I will not stand for it.”

He called the EPA’s decision another example of the agency’s “inappropriate use of … regulatory authority to set policy”, a power he argued resided with the Congress and not Jackson’s department.

Also, while it did not respond to a request for comment on this story, the United Mine Workers of America had a lot to say following the announcement, when it expressed its deep concern for the impact the regulations would have on the industry.

“We believe that the proposed standards would eliminate the construction of new advanced coal generation, which should be a cornerstone of the president’s ‘all of the above’ energy policy,” president Cecil Roberts said.

“The proposed standards depart from more than 40 years of EPA regulation of fossil fuel emissions by lumping natural gas and coal plants into one category, subject to a single performance standard.”

He noted previous EPA regulations under the Clean Air Act had set separate performance standards for coal and natural gas, thereby recognizing the differences between the two.

“EPA knows very well that CCS technology has not been commercially demonstrated … but the rule it proposed would require the potential builders of new coal plants to commit to CCS at the time of their permit applications, despite the associated costs and uncertainties,” Roberts said.

“In practice, it would not be possible to finance a new coal plant to meet the proposed EPA standards.”

American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity president Steve Miller also leaped onto the bandwagon.

“Unfortunately, the EPA continues to ignore the real impact their rules will have on American families and businesses by driving up energy prices and destroying jobs,” he said.

“This is another, in a series of new regulations, written by EPA to prevent the US from taking advantage of our vast coal resources that are responsible for providing affordable electricity for America’s families and businesses.”

He agreed the rule would make the construction of new coal-fired plants impossible, and it could also force the premature closure of many other plants that are in operation today.

“So far, other EPA regulations are responsible for the announced closure of more than 140 electricity generating units in 19 states,” Miller said.

“The regulation EPA proposed could raise the number of closures even higher and put more workers out of jobs.”

So where is the solution? For now we wait, but also keep that resiliency that has made this industry what it is.

As Albert Einstein said: “Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”

Perhaps the crux of the problem?

This article first appeared in the June 2012 issue of Coal USA magazine.