Free Republic

White House National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs banking executive, has reopened the U.S. government’s war on coal in direct contravention of directions from President Donald Trump. “Coal doesn’t even make that much sense anymore as a feedstock,” Cohn said in Europe on Air Force One, while speaking for the White House to the press, the New York Times’ Brad Plumer noted. “Natural gas, which we have become an abundant producer, which we’re going to become a major exporter is, is such a cleaner fuel,” Cohn continued. Cohn’s comments against the coal industry come as he...

Four Democratic attorneys general sued the Trump administration for reversing a moratorium on issuing coal mining leases on federal lands. Three of the Democratic AGs — California, New York and Washington — come from states that do not produce coal. Only New Mexico AG Hector Balderas comes from a coal-producing state. All four Democratic AGs are part of the “Green 20” coalition of top state prosecutors working together to keep Obama administration environmental policies from being repealed and investigate “whether fossil fuel companies misled investors and the public on the impact of climate change on their businesses,” according to a...

Boulder - Remember that unsuccessful attempt in the legislature to toughen penalties for vandalizing oil and gas equipment? Child’s play. It turns out the author of a letter to the editor in Boulder’s Daily Camera that got a national media mention last week — for appearing to endorse outright violence against fracking operations — is the author of a pending statewide ballot issue to hike Colorado’s severance tax on oil and gas production. Reached by phone today, Andrew O’Connor, of Lafayette, unapologetically reiterated his hardline stance ... “I wouldn’t have a problem with a sniper shooting one of the workers”...

President Donald Trump is expected to lift a moratorium on federal coal-mining leases -- though it probably won’t do the industry much good until years after he’s left office. That’s because U.S. coal companies including Peabody Energy Corp. won’t be looking to secure new reserves of the fossil fuel on federal land for years, especially as mining slows amid the sector’s worst downturn in generations. Production in Wyoming and Montana, where much of government coal is located, fell 18 percent in 2016 from the prior year. Coal’s share of U.S. power generation has plunged in the face of competition from...

Coal ash scare stories are the latest tactic in their long war on coal-fueled electricity generation Coal-fired power plant scrubbers now remove 80-90 % of airborne particulate, mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and other pollutants. But that means “fly ash” and noncombustible residues (what we used to call clinkers) must be sent to landfills. That’s opened a new front for anti-energy activists, who use accidents, “detectable” pollutants in water, and scary stories about health threats to advance their agenda. In 2008, a Tennessee Valley Authority earthen retainer dam near Knoxville ruptured, sending 5.4 million cubic yards of rain-soaked fly ash...

The fact that it’s being proposed by Republicans doesn’t make it any more economically palatable. Madness is rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule — Friedrich Nietzsche ‘Cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat; it was not the only way,” Barack Obama declared after Democrats’ disastrous losses in the 2010 midterm elections. That shellacking finally killed off the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. From it was born the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and the Obama administration’s war on coal, in turn a contributory factor to Donald Trump’s election and Republicans’...

Households in New England paid electricity prices last month that were 47 percent higher than the national average.. Consumer energy information released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for its Boston region showed the area's households paid an average of 19.5 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity, compared to the national average of 13.3 cents. The region includes Hampden and Worcester counties as well as Greater Boston and parts of New Hampshire, Connecticut and Maine. The figures came out one day after energy utility Eversource proposed a 10 percent increase in its electricity distribution rates beginning early next year. The...

Wise County, Virginia –  A long-awaited revival is under way in this beleaguered Central Appalachia community where residents see coal as the once and future king. Trucks are running again. Miners working seven days a week cannot keep up with current demand. Coal mines, long dormant after the industry’s collapse, are now buzzing again with antlike activity. “We load coal every day for the power plant in Virginia City,” explained Rick, a long-time supervisor for a major local operation who did not want to give his last name. “There's one shipment a week for Georgia Power, and one for Tennessee...

March 1 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will target a handful of Obama-era green regulations, including a federal coal mining ban and an initiative forcing states to cut carbon emissions, in an executive order as soon as next week a White House official told Reuters on Wednesday. Trump and his fellow Republicans who control Congress are seeking to unravel former Democratic President Barack Obama's initiatives to combat global climate change, which they say are costly for U.S. business and have hampered drilling and mining without providing any clear benefits.

Ontario’s hell-bent determination to phase out coal-fired generation raised electricity rates without significantly improving air pollution levels, a new Fraser Institute report says. Ontario’s hell-bent determination to phase out coal-fired generation raised electricity rates without significantly improving air pollution levels, a new Fraser Institute report says. Report co-author Ross McKitrick, an economics professor at the University of Guelph, said the findings should act as a cautionary tale for Alberta and Ottawa currently going down the same road. Even though there was reliable information available at the time that showed Ontario coal was not a big player in common air pollution...

A judge has ordered federal regulators to quickly evaluate how many power plant and coal mining jobs are lost because of air pollution regulations. U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey in Wheeling made the ruling after reviewing a response from outgoing U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy. McCarthy had responded to the judge’s previous order in a lawsuit brought against her by Murray Energy Corp. that the EPA must start doing an analysis that it hadn’t done in decades. […] The judge said the EPA is required by law to analyze the economic impact on a continuing basis when...

On November 8th, Donald Trump became the first Republican to win Pennsylvania since 1988, emerging victorious by just 44,292 votes. To put that in perspective, the last time the GOP won PA: the Berlin Wall was still up, Jimmy Stewart was still alive and I wasn’t even born yet. How did the Keystone State shift from blue to red after so long? That’s what this piece aims to find out. Regional Breakdown: There’s an oft-cited apocryphal James Carville quote that Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in the middle. Like many myths, this one takes a kernel of truth...

At virtually the last possible moment, the Obama administration on Monday rolled out new regulations making it even more difficult and more costly to mine coal in the U.S., a final shot against the already beleaguered coal industry as the president leaves office. The Interior Department’s Stream Protection Rule will go into effect 30 after its official release and publication in the federal register, meaning it likely will be implemented Jan. 19 — one day before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Mr. Trump has vowed to undo much of his predecessor’s environmental regulations, including rules that target coal mining. The...

County officials in western Colorado have regularly lambasted Planning 2.0 and this week, Garfield County joined in with five other counties in the western United States considering suing to halt the rule, which they have criticized as a central-planning measure. The BLM this month announced that the rule was final and on Monday, Garfield County agreed to spend as much as $40,000 with the Texas-based property-rights organization, the American Stewards of Liberty, to halt it. While Garfield County is taking an active role, Mesa County officials are looking to Congress and a Republican administration under President-elect Donald Trump to deal...

A new report has government officials considering setting 10 million acres of across six states in the American west off limits to mining and development to protect the chicken-like Greater Sage Grouse, which is not an endangered species. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) report found that much of the Sage Grouse’s habitat sits on top of extremely valuable deposits of minerals including gold, copper, lithium, silver, uranium and many others. The USGS report means that the government’s most restrictive grouse protection plan could kill even more than 31,000 jobs and lead to more than $5.6 billion in reduced annual economic...

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral argument next Tuesday, September 27 on the Environmental Protection Agency’s so-called Clean Power Plan. The centerpiece of resident Obama’s climate policy agenda, the Plan establishes first-ever carbon dioxide (CO2) emission standards for “existing” (already built) coal and natural gas power plants. The Plan will increase consumer energy prices and impede job and GDP growth yet have no discernible effect on global temperatures or sea levels. However, that’s not why the Court should strike it down. The Court should overturn the Plan because it is an unlawful power grab. The Plan will...

Just when Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” comment set a new low for insensitivity, we saw another real zinger this week from former Clinton White House staffer William Galston. In a smug Wall Street Journal op-ed, Galston deemed the “war on coal” a claim perpetuated by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to reinforce the coal community’s perceived “victimhood.” Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, a few things have happened: + In 2008, President Obama promised, “If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them.” + The president’s subsequent MATS rule shut down at least 33 GW...

Speaking in Homewood, PA on Friday, Bill Clinton criticized the “coal people” in West Virginia for supporting Donald Trump .“We all know how [Hillary’s] opponent has done well down in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky,” the former president told the crowd at the Greater Pittsburgh Coliseum. “The coal people don’t like any of us [Democrats] anymore.” Clinton added that “they all voted for me. I won twice, and they did well.” “They blame the president when the sun doesn’t come up in the morning now.”

This Labor Day, America has 83,000 fewer coal jobs and 400 coal mines than it did when Barack Obama was elected in 2008, showing that the president has followed through on his pledge to “bankrupt” the coal industry. A 2015 study found the coal industry lost 50,000 jobs from 2008 to 2012 during Obama’s first term. During Obama’s second term, the industry employment in coal mining has fallen by another 33,300 jobs, 10,900 of which occurred in the last year alone, according to federal data. Currently, coal mining employs 69,460 Americans, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Much of...

It is difficult to imagine such levels of poverty existing in the most powerful nation on earth - but it does in McDowell County, West Virginia. Abandoned shops, closed schools and neglected homes are visible on almost every corner in every distressed community. Whole families are plagued by the consequences of unemployment and widespread drug abuse. The average life expectancy for men is 64 - the same as Namibia.But it was not always like this. McDowell was once a hustling and bustling town, thriving off the riches of the coal industry. The reliance on one industry proved fatal and...