infrastructure

26Feb

A Most Critical Material

Steel underpins modern society. As the world builds, urbanization increases, infrastructure expands and new technologies emerge to help meet soaring energy demand, steel is the essential material making it happen. And it is metallurgical coal that is used to produce 70% of the world’s steel. Metallurgical coal is a critical, strategic material that underpins economic […]
25Jul

U.S. Miners Make American Life Possible

As the U.S. labor market cools and employment gains slow, the mining industry continues to provide extraordinary career opportunities about which most Americans know very little. When asked to describe a day in the life of a miner, most think of pickaxes and canaries instead of the remotely-operated machinery, artificial intelligence and other innovations that […]
19Jul

Meeting Global Demand

How important is American coal to the global energy mix? Consider that in 2022 U.S. coal exports went to 71 countries and U.S. coal played a critical role in helping Europe pivot away from Russian energy, filling yawning supply gaps during the worst energy crisis since the 1970s. The U.S. exported 84.8 million short tons […]
24May

The Biden Administration’s Arithmetic Problem

The Biden administration is building its entire energy agenda on a foundation of speed. Or as some members of the Biden energy team like to say, “deploy, deploy, deploy.” Their mandate is to build wind turbines, solar arrays, site transmission lines and reshore supply chains overnight while the U.S. (EPA) Environmental Protection Agency simultaneously tears […]
19Apr

EV Ambitions Built on Imploding Grid Reliability

The Biden administration seems perpetually optimistic, and rarely realistic. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has rolled out new tailpipe emission standards that are going to force a lightning-quick pivot to electric vehicles (EVs). By 2032, EPA hopes that 67% of new car sales are zero-emission. Getting there is going to be colossally challenging. It’s […]
29Mar

Where’s the Transmission?

As the Biden administration charges ahead with its regulatory blitz to shutter the existing U.S. coal fleet, the infrastructure required for renewable energy to reliably support American households and businesses simply doesn’t exist.  Again and again, experts warn that transmission is the key to building a renewable-heavy future. Analyses from researchers at national labs, the […]
23Feb

Mines for Manufacturing Tomorrow’s Steel

The pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the energy and supply chain crises that followed, have all upended trade flows and commodity markets, requiring a near moment-to-moment focus on near-term market conditions with supply shocks and inflationary pressure driving unprecedented policy responses. While the shocks still reverberate, there’s now room for a return to long-term […]
14Dec

American Manufacturers Warn Against Coal Retirements

U.S. natural gas prices have tripled in a year, and promises of its abundance are now being replaced by growing concerns of scarcity as demand outpaces interstate pipeline capacity. Supply chokepoints and regional price premiums are emerging across the country and it’s a problem poised to get far worse as more essential coal generating capacity […]
30Mar

Burying the Lede, and Responsible Energy Policy

A new study designed to show that a future in Texas without coal is within reach in fact shows just the opposite. Like other studies and models before it, renewable boosters have an interesting propensity to bury the lede. In this case, a study about Texas’ vast wind and solar potential in fact highlights one […]
16Feb

Creating Our Own Energy Crisis

Perhaps the greatest challenge of the energy transition is timing the installation of the infrastructure and generating capacity required for our energy future in parallel with – or more quickly – than we are dismantling our current electricity mix and the affordability and reliability it underpins. Unfortunately, it’s a challenge policymakers either seem not to […]