Blog

17Oct

Embrace the Pragmatism of Low Emissions Coal Technology

In 2013, the World Bank Group decided to limit financial support for coal-fueled power plants to what it deemed “rare and exceptional circumstances.” It was a decision that almost immediately made perfect the enemy of the good and, as the World Coal Association (WCA) argues in a new report, has likely proved counterproductive to achieving […]
11Oct

Perspective on a Global Challenge

According to the U.N Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world must overhaul how it consumes and produces energy if global warming is to be slowed and eventually stopped. The IPCC’s proposed path forward would see the world all but drop fossil fuels by 2050. It’s a headscratcher. Nearly 80 percent of global energy […]
03Oct

Listen to This

This week, the EPA held a listening session on the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule – its proposed replacement for the prior administration’s costly Clean Power Plan (CPP). The message delivered by the National Mining Association (NMA) and others who care about the reliability and affordability of the grid was clear: the ACE rule is […]
26Sep

A Playbook on What Not to Do

The German Energiewende, or energy transition, was supposed to stir like a composition from Bach or Beethoven. Instead, it sounds like a fork stuck in a garbage disposal. When the Germans embarked on their grand pivot to renewable sources of power, they knew the effort was going to be costly but did they expect the […]
20Sep

Don’t Overlook the Value of Fuel Diversity

British environmentalists are in a tizzy. Despite heavy-handed government efforts to push coal off the UK’s grid, it is regaining market share and bringing much-needed relief to consumers who have dealt with household electricity costs 74 percent higher than here in the U.S. Britain’s pivot away from coal to wind, solar and natural gas has […]
12Sep

California’s Regressive Lab Experiment

Responsible governance is defined differently in California. Governor Jerry Brown has signed an executive order for the state to slash its overall emissions to zero by 2045 and then go negative, meaning that in 2046 the state will have to start pulling more emissions from the atmosphere than it puts in. As a compliment to […]
05Sep

An Alternate Reality

The ongoing debate in the U.S. over the future of coal seems to exist in an alternate reality. While we fight over everything from market distortions to the permitting of coal export terminals, the majority of the world is embracing coal, building more modern, far more efficient plants than our own. Coal isn’t a problem […]
31Aug

How About Now?

Like a snowball tumbling downhill, the reliability crisis is only picking up steam. Despite the continuous and ever-louder warnings that we are quickly approaching a point of no return, regulators and grid operators have brushed aside concerns and spoken in platitudes about protecting a free market that is anything but free. Just how much longer […]
22Aug

From Illegal Overreach to Thoughtful Restraint

The Obama administration’s environmental agenda can be neatly summed up by the word “overreach.” No order from the administration better defined this overreach than the Clean Power Plan (CPP), better known as the Costly Power Plan. It was nothing if not ambitious. With one stroke, President Obama’s EPA shrugged off 45 years of legal interpretation […]
15Aug

Perspective and Optimism

Appreciating the optimism that now permeates the coal industry requires a little history. After all, context matters. Rewind to 2011, the year the Mine Health and Safety Administration (MHSA) reported a highwater mark of 143,940 coal miners. Just five years later, by the close of 2016, there were just 81,875 of those miners left employed. […]