How The American Coal Industry Found Itself In An Economic No Man’s Land

[kristopher]

How The American Coal Industry Found Itself In An Economic No Man’s Land
BY JEFF SPROSS ON NOVEMBER 4, 2013 AT 12:28 PM

American coal country is in a contradictory position. Increases in productivity cut the industry’s employment by tens of thousands over the last few decades, the natural gas boom that’s eaten away at coal’s share of the power sector may be about to bust, but it’s not clear coal can expand to take advantage of the opening.

So at a Congressional hearing last week — looking into the impact on coal-dependent communities of new regulations for power plants — the anger was palpable, if also confused.

Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced limits on carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants. Limits for already operating power plants will be released in 2014. Given the strictness of the rules, and the fact that coal is by far the power sector’s most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, critics have called the regulations an effective ban on new coal plants.

Many of the witnesses and Congress members at Tuesday’s hearing were ready to lay responsibility for the coal industry’s woes at the feet of the EPA’s new rules — sometimes openly agreeing that President Obama is waging a “war on coal.” Albey Brock — a judge from Bell County, Kentucky — estimated in his testimony that job losses in Eastern Kentucky’s coal mining industry over the last two years sucked $1 billion out of the regional economy. That in turn means lost revenue for state and local programs that help the quarter of the region’s population that lives in poverty.

The problem is neither ...

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/11/04/2878971/american-coal-industry-economic-mans-land/

[bananas]

1. "give a coal miner a coat hanger and some electrical tape, he can fix anything."

But according to Ventrone’s own testimony, the skills involved in boilermaking are actually quite wide-reaching. Writing recently in The Hill, Carl Shoupe, a coal worker from Kentucky, made the same point about miners: “We like to say that if you give a coal miner a coat hanger and some electrical tape, he can fix anything.”

Weiss laid out how a 2010 report from the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry found the state’s energy efficiency sector was providing 65,000 jobs, renewable energy was providing 41,000 jobs, and environmental clean-up was providing 11,600 jobs, among many other clean-energy-related sectors. That’s in comparison to 8,665 Pennsylvanians employed by coal in 2011. Weiss also pointed to the 1990 Clean Air Act as a model: from 1992 to 1996, the program invested $83 million in job training and in readjustment aid to 6,366 workers who lost their livelihood when their employer moved to comply with the legislation.