16May

Poor Justification for Obama Administration’s Coal Leasing Moratorium

Via The Hill:  In January, the Obama administration announced a three-year moratorium on the leasing of new coal reserves located on federal lands. The ostensible reason for such a moratorium, as Interior Secretary Sally Jewell subsequently explained, is to review current leasing procedures and to make sure that taxpayers receive a fair return for publicly […]
13May

State, Residents Will Pay Huge Cost Under Clean Power Plan

Via The Exponent Telegram: President Obama and the EPA’s Clean Power Plan is costing West Virginia’s economy billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lost jobs since its inception as the law of the land. The impact on the state budget, coal companies and coal-related jobs, as well as the negative impact on the […]
12May

Clean Power Plan Will Raise Energy Costs

Via The Roanoke Times:  Finally, the United States judiciary has stopped the runaway train known as the Obama administration. In a ruling issued Feb. 9, the U.S. Supreme Court called a halt to the implementation of the so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP), the president’s signature program to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from coal-burning power […]
12May

What Powers Alabama? Coal to Remain Key Fuel

Via AL.com: Electric utilities across the country, and in Alabama, are using significantly less coal than they were just a decade ago thanks to environmental regulations and the low cost of natural gas. But representatives from Alabama Power, which provides electrical service to about two thirds of the state, say that coal will remain an […]
11May

Destroying Coal to Save It

April 11, 2016 On the eve of primaries in West Virginia and Kentucky, EPA Administrator McCarthy inadvertently showed why voters are fed up with Washington. – She bewailed the plight of coal communities as her agency aggressively regulates their primary employer out of business, then offers the victims a taxpayer-funded aid package to mitigate the suffering […]
10May

Coal Crushed by Needless Regulation

Via The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel:  For decades, Colorado has proudly mined the coal that fuels American industry. During World War II, coal helped fire the steel foundries and factories that built America into the “Arsenal of Democracy.” And today, with coal still supplying roughly 35 percent of U.S. power generation — more than any […]
10May

The Federal Coal Moratorium — Politics Masquerading as Policy

Via The Desert News:  Some Americans may not realize it, but coal still provides roughly 35 percent of all the electricity generated in the United States. That’s the largest share of affordable electricity from any one energy source. States that rely on coal as their primary source of power enjoy the lowest electricity costs nationwide. […]
09May

HEITKAMP: We Need to Stand Up for Coal Country

Via The Grand Fork Herald:  Walking up and down the wind-swept prairie slopes near Beulah this week, it occurred to me that this swath of grassy land—an unmined portion of lignite coal country—probably doesn’t look like a coal mine to someone who’s not from North Dakota. In North Dakota, we know that our coal mining […]
07May

The Candidate in the Coal Fields

Via HuntingtonNews.Net:  This picture was worth a thousand words.  An AP photo of Hillary Clinton confronted during a West Virginia campaign stop by unemployed coal miner Bo Copley and his wife, holding a picture of their young daughters. Copley, tearful and choked up, managed to ask the presumptive heir to President Obama’s anti-coal policies how she could […]
06May

Coal Jobs are Vanishing Before Our Very Eyes

Via The U.S. Chamber of Commerce:  Michael Kinsley, a long-time observer of national politics, explained 30 years ago in The New Republic that “a ‘gaffe’ occurs not when a politician lies, but when he tells the truth.” In 2008 President Barack Obama, when he was running for the highest office in the land, committed one when […]