Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

GORDON TOMB: Dig, Baby, Dig: Making Coal Great Again

A coal mine in Pennsylvania. (Screen Capture/WHYY PBS)

Has the time come to make coal great again? Maybe.

“Coal is cheap and far less profitable to export than to burn domestically. so, let’s burn it here,” says Steve Milloy, a veteran observer of the energy industry who served on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team for the first Trump administration. “It will provide an abundance of affordable and reliable electricity while helping coal communities thrive for the long term.”

The U.S. coal industry has been in a long decline since at least President Barack Obama’s regulatory “war on coal” initiated 15 years ago. At the same time, natural gas became more competitive with coal as a power-plant fuel when new hydrofracturing techniques lowered the price of the former.

In Pennsylvania, a state with prodigious amounts of both fuels, natural gas has all but replaced coal for electric generation. Between 2001 and 2021, gas’ share of power production rose from 2% to 52% as coal’s dropped from 57% to 12%, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Last year, Pennsylvania’s largest coal-fired power plant shut down under the pressures of regulations and economics after spending nearly $1 billion on pollution controls in the preceding decade.

Nationally, between 2013 and 2023, domestic coal production declined by more than 30% and industry employment by more than 40%.

While the first Trump administration provided somewhat of a respite from federal hostility toward fossil fuels in general and coal in particular, President Joe Biden revived Obama’s viciously negative stance on hydrocarbons while promoting weather-dependent wind and solar energy. This absurdity has wrecked livelihoods and made the power grid more prone to blackouts.

Fortunately, the second Trump administration will be exponentially more friendly toward development of fossil fuels. High on the list is increasing exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). “[T]he next four years could prime the liquefied natural gas (LNG) markets for a golden era,” says market analyst Rystad Energy. “[T]he returning president’s expected policies are likely to accelerate U.S. LNG infrastructure expansion through deregulation and faster permitting…”

All of which is in line with Milloy’s formulation of energy policy. We should “export our gas to Europe and Asia, places that will pay six times more than it sells for in the U.S.” says Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.com and author of books on regulatory overreach, fearmongering and corruption. “Let’s reopen mothballed coal plants, build new coal plants…”

Accompanying rising expectations of easing regulatory obstacles for natural gas is hope that coal can clear daunting environmental hurdles put in place by “green” zealots.

For one thing, the obnoxiously irrational EPA rule defining carbon dioxide — a byproduct of combustion — as a pollutant is destined for the dustbin of destructive policy as common sense and honest science are reestablished among regulators.

Moreover, clean-coal technology makes the burning of the fuel, well, clean. China and India have more than 100 ultra-super critical coal-fired plants that employ high pressures and temperatures to achieve extraordinary efficiencies and minimal pollution. Yet, the United States, which originated the technology more than a decade ago, has only one such facility — the John W. Turk plant in Arkansas.

The point is the United States is underutilizing both coal and the best technology for its use. At the current rate of consumption, the nation’s 250 billion tons of recoverable coal is enough for more than 200 years.

So, if more natural gas winds up being exported as LNG at higher prices, might not coal be an economical — and logical — alternative?

Nuclear power is another possibility, but not for a while. Even with a crash development program and political will aplenty, it is likely to take decades for nuclear reactors to be deployed sufficiently to carry the bulk of the nation’s power load. Barriers range from the need to sort out competing nuclear technologies to regulatory lethargy —if not misfeasance — to financing needs in the many billions and a dearth of qualified engineers.

The last big U.S. reactors to go into operation — units 3 and 4 of Georgia Power’s Vogtle plant — took more than a decade to build and went $17 billion over budget.

“The regulatory environment is better, but it still costs too much and takes too long to get new reactors approved,” writes long-time nuclear enthusiast Robert Bryce.

Can anybody say, “Dig, baby, dig?”

Gordon Tomb is a senior advisor with the CO₂ Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia, and once drove coal trucks.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.