Free Republic

Between 1989 and 2010, Congress rejected nearly 700 cap-tax-and-trade and similar bills that their proponents claimed would control Earth’s perpetually fickle climate and weather. So even as real world crises erupt, President Obama is using executive fiats and regulations to impose his anti-hydrocarbon agenda, slash America’s fossil fuel use, bankrupt coal and utility companies, make electricity prices skyrocket, and “fundamentally transform” our economic, social, legal and constitutional system. Citing climate concerns, he has refused to permit construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and blocked or delayed Alaskan, western state and offshore oil and gas leasing and drilling. He’s proud that...

Coal imports to the U.S. are rising sharply even as coal mines close throughout Central Appalachia. A big reason: price. It costs $26 a ton to ship coal from Central Appalachia to power plants in Florida compared with $15 a ton to get coal from a mine in Colombia, according to research firm IHS Energy. Labor costs are lower in Colombia, and it's much more cost effective to move coal by ship, which can transport well over 50,000 tons of coal, than by train, usually made up of more than 100 railcars, each carrying only 100 tons of coal. In...

Before we become too optimistic about the prospects for using renewable energy sources to curb carbon emissions, it’s worth looking at a study commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which should give pause to even the most confident advocate of action against climate change. The study forecasts that new EPA regulations -- regulations intended to cut carbon emissions by 30% from coal-, oil- and natural gas-fired plants by 2030 -- will lead to higher energy costs, fewer jobs, and slower economic growth in the United States. That, in turn, will lower Americans’ standards of living. A typical household could...

For the pro-coal senator, the "war on coal" begins at home. ... while McConnell presents himself as a defender of Kentucky coal mining, a member of his own family who serves as a key campaign surrogate is taking a role in an organization that funds one of the most aggressive anti-coal campaigns in the country. McConnell’s wife, former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, sits on the board of directors of Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has plunged $50 million into the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal initiative, an advocacy effort with the expressed goal of killing the coal industry. In 2011, Bloomberg Philanthropies...

Democrats from red states are feeling the heat. Their constituents don’t like Obama, or his polices, and they have to somehow convince them that they’ll be somewhat independent when it comes to fighting for their interests. Natalie Tennant, the Democratic candidate in West Virginia’s Senate race, is trying to disseminate that message of independene with this ad rebuking Obama’s energy policy. It was released at the end of July. She says that she’ll protect coal jobs in West Virginia and “stand up to leaders of both parties who threaten our way of life.” She then proceeds to turn off...

Coming into the midterm elections, Democrats across the country are attempting to distance themselves from President Obama and his many failed policies, and who could blame them? With historically low approval numbers and the majority of Americans thinking our nation is worse off than when he took office, supporting him now would be the kiss of death in certain states where his agenda has had the worst effects. West Virginia is one of them. A video posted to YouTube Monday shows a concerned West Virginia voter questioning Democratic Senate candidate Natalie Tennant on her support for Obama, specifically his anti-coal...

BEIJING (AP) — China's smog-plagued capital has announced that it will ban all coal sales and use by the end of 2020 as part of its anti-pollution fight. Beijing's Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau posted the plan on its website on Monday, saying the city will instead prioritize electricity and natural gas, especially for heating. China's official Xinhua News Agency said coal accounted for a quarter of Beijing's energy consumption in 2012. Even with the Beijing ban, coal use is expected to soar in China. Coal is a major generator of greenhouse gases and has helped turn China into the world's...

BLUEFIELD — Back in 1933, the struggling United Mine Workers of America union got a shot in the arm from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal” legislation that allowed workers to organize into unions. That commitment from a Democratic administration tipped the playing field in the union’s direction, and within a short time, almost all coal mines in the two Virginias were organized. From that time forward, most Democratic Party candidates could count on loyal UMWA support. That may not change in the future, but six years of more stringent environmental regulations governing coal-fired power generation emissions has put the...

It’s unlikely that United Mine Workers of America president Cecil Roberts thought he would be arrested protesting the energy policies of the very politician his union supported in 2008. But things have come full circle for coal miners, who now see President Obama’s climate agenda threatening their livelihoods. Roberts and other UMWA members were arrested Thursday marching through Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, towards the federal building the Environmental Protection Agency was holding field hearings for a new rule that could very well force more coal mines and plants to shut down. …

Twelve states filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration on Friday seeking to block an Environmental Protection Agency proposal to regulate coal-fired power plants in an effort to stem climate change. The plaintiffs are led by West Virginia and include states that are home to some of the largest producers of coal and consumers of coal-fired electricity. The suit was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The other plaintiffs are Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming. The E.P.A. rule, announced by President Obama on June...

PITTSBURGH —Union miners and others opposed to stricter pollution rules for coal-burning power plants proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency clashed inside and outside the city's federal building on the first of two days of public hearings on the new regulations. About 5,000 union members, led by the United Mine Workers of America, on Thursday marched to the William S. Moorhead Federal Building chanting, "Hey, hey, EPA! Don't take our jobs away!" A few members of a Pittsburgh-based union, Boilermakers Local 154, traded shouts and insults with some 300 environmental activists who stood on a nearby street corner as the...

For the first time ever, the average price for a kilowatthour (KWH) of electricity in the United States has broken through the 14-cent mark, climbing to a record 14.3 cents in June. ... Back in June 1984, the seasonally adjusted price index for electricity was 103.9—less than half what it was in June 2014. Electricity prices have not always risen in the United States. The BLS has published an annual electricity price index dating back to 1913. It shows that from that year through 1947, the price of electricity in the United States generally trended down, with the index dropping...

As the Obama administration weans the U.S. off dirty fuels blamed for global warming, energy companies have been sending more of America's unwanted energy leftovers to other parts of the world where they could create even more pollution. This fossil fuel trade threatens to undermine President Barack Obama's strategy for reducing the gases blamed for climate change and reveals a little-discussed side effect of countries acting alone on a global problem. The contribution of this exported pollution to global warming is not something the administration wants to measure, or even talk about.

Bloomberg is reporting on the increase in coal company bankruptcies in recent years, due to the switch by power companies to natural gas and fracking, which has flooded the market with cheap gas. Driving this conversion is the prospect of new, draconian rules to be issued by the EPA on emissions from coal plants. Exports are failing to save U.S. miners. Slowing Chinese growth and rising competition from overseas, including increased Australian output, have sent the price of metallurgical coal, used in steelmaking, to a six-year low. Central Appalachian thermal coal, used in power plants to produce electricity, fell on...

Rep. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) invites — no, Daines demands — Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency visit the town of Colstrip, Mont., to see for herself the impact of her agency’s Clean Power Plan on that community. So far, he has not received her RSVP. This time next year, he could have a lot more pull with the EPA. Daines could be forgiven if he is doing some early packing. He can’t be too worried about winning the November Senate election. Rasmussen Reports gives him an 18-point lead among Montana voters in his bid to replace Sen....

Power stations that burn biomass are worse for the environment than those that burn coal, new analysis suggests. According to David MacKay, the government’s chief scientific advisor on energy, burning wood imported from North America in British power stations produces more greenhouse gases than burning coal.As previously reported on Breitbart London, American scientists wrote a letter to the British government in May to protest the policy of subsidising power firms to import wooden pellets from the U.S. They said that this was anything but carbon neutral as the forests from which the pellets are taken act as a “carbon sink”, taking carbon dioxide...

Beijing (AFP) - Beijing on Wednesday closed the first of four large coal-fired power plants that are set to be shut down as part of efforts to curb its choking air pollution, media reported. The 50-year-old Gaojing Thermal Power Plant is to be replaced with a gas-fired power station, one of four that is to be built as the Chinese capital aims to boost its reliance on cleaner energy, Xinhua news agency said. The other three major coal-fired power plants in Beijing will be closed by 2016, the state-run agency added. A five-year plan was introduced in the city last...

EPA chief Gina McCarthy issued a strong defense of controversial proposed new curbs on carbon emissions from power plants, telling a packed Senate hearing Wednesday the agency talked to all sides in the debate before issuing its draft recommendations. “This is the most respectful rule at the federal level that I have ever been involved in,” the Environmental Protection Agency administrator told the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, citing what she said was the flexibility given to the states to design their own plans to reduce carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030. But Republicans and many in...

Another round of layoffs for the coal industry – this one striking Wise County, Virginia. On Monday workers at both Cumberland River Coal’s Pine Branch Number One in Wise County, and a second mine in Letcher County, Kentucky, learned that the mines would be shutting down indefinitely. Derrick Saylor is one of the workers who learned that he would be losing his job. "Here in the mountains we are tight knit, like a family," said Saylor. "People we work with are like family cause we are with them as much as family at home" "It’s tough [and] it’s sad to...

The battle over where New Mexico’s electricity will come from after Public Service Company of New Mexico shuts down half of the coal-fired units at San Juan Generating Station near Farmington is growing. Environmentalists and renewable energy advocates adamantly oppose a PNM proposal to increase its share of coal-generated electricity from San Juan by 132 megawatts after some of the plant’s other co-owners abandon it. They fear PNM is committing New Mexico consumers to another two decades of coal-fired electricity despite rising costs from federal environmental regulations, while squandering an opportunity to double down on renewable energy for the future....