Energy
Dig, Baby, Dig: Making Coal Great Again. A Convincing Case for Coal
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Gordon Tomb
Has the time come to make coal great again? Maybe.
“Coal is cheap and far less profitable to export than to burn domestically. so, let’s burn it here,” says Steve Milloy, a veteran observer of the energy industry who served on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team for the first Trump administration. “It will provide an abundance of affordable and reliable electricity while helping coal communities thrive for the long term.”
The U.S. coal industry has been in a long decline since at least President Barack Obama’s regulatory “war on coal” initiated 15 years ago. At the same time, natural gas became more competitive with coal as a power-plant fuel when new hydrofracturing techniques lowered the price of the former.
In Pennsylvania, a state with prodigious amounts of both fuels, natural gas has all but replaced coal for electric generation. Between 2001 and 2021, gas’ share of power production rose from 2% to 52% as coal’s dropped from 57% to 12%, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Last year, Pennsylvania’s largest coal-fired power plant shut down under the pressures of regulations and economics after spending nearly $1 billion on pollution controls in the preceding decade.
Nationally, between 2013 and 2023, domestic coal production declined by more than 30% and industry employment by more than 40%.
While the first Trump administration provided somewhat of a respite from federal hostility toward fossil fuels in general and coal in particular, President Joe Biden revived Obama’s viciously negative stance on hydrocarbons while promoting weather-dependent wind and solar energy. This absurdity has wrecked livelihoods and made the power grid more prone to blackouts.
Fortunately, the second Trump administration will be exponentially more friendly toward development of fossil fuels. High on the list is increasing exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). “[T]he next four years could prime the liquefied natural gas (LNG) markets for a golden era,” says market analyst Rystad Energy. “[T]he returning president’s expected policies are likely to accelerate U.S. LNG infrastructure expansion through deregulation and faster permitting…”
All of which is in line with Milloy’s formulation of energy policy. We should “export our gas to Europe and Asia, places that will pay six times more than it sells for in the U.S.” says Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.com and author of books on regulatory overreach, fearmongering and corruption. “Let’s reopen mothballed coal plants, build new coal plants…”
Accompanying rising expectations of easing regulatory obstacles for natural gas is hope that coal can clear daunting environmental hurdles put in place by “green” zealots.
For one thing, the obnoxiously irrational EPA rule defining carbon dioxide — a byproduct of combustion — as a pollutant is destined for the dustbin of destructive policy as common sense and honest science are reestablished among regulators.
Moreover, clean-coal technology makes the burning of the fuel, well, clean. China and India have more than 100 ultra-super critical coal-fired plants that employ high pressures and temperatures to achieve extraordinary efficiencies and minimal pollution. Yet, the United States, which originated the technology more than a decade ago, has only one such facility — the John W. Turk plant in Arkansas.
The point is the United States is underutilizing both coal and the best technology for its use. At the current rate of consumption, the nation’s 250 billion tons of recoverable coal is enough for more than 200 years.
So, if more natural gas winds up being exported as LNG at higher prices, might not coal be an economical — and logical — alternative?
Nuclear power is another possibility, but not for a while. Even with a crash development program and political will aplenty, it is likely to take decades for nuclear reactors to be deployed sufficiently to carry the bulk of the nation’s power load. Barriers range from the need to sort out competing nuclear technologies to regulatory lethargy —if not misfeasance — to financing needs in the many billions and a dearth of qualified engineers.
The last big U.S. reactors to go into operation — units 3 and 4 of Georgia Power’s Vogtle plant — took more than a decade to build and went $17 billion over budget.
“The regulatory environment is better, but it still costs too much and takes too long to get new reactors approved,” writes long-time nuclear enthusiast Robert Bryce.
Can anybody say, “Dig, baby, dig?”
Gordon Tomb is a senior advisor with the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia, and once drove coal trucks.
2016 image provided by Misti Leon, left, sits with her mom, Juliana Leon. Misti Leon is suing several oil and gas companies in one of the first wrongful-death claims in the U.S. seeking to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its role in the changing climate.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jason Isaac
They twist yesterday’s weather into tomorrow’s crisis, peddle apocalyptic forecasts that fizzle, and swap “global warming” for “climate change” whenever the narrative demands. They sound the alarm on a so-called climate emergency — again and again.
Now, the Left has plunged to a new low: weaponizing the courts with a lawsuit in Washington State that marks a brazen, desperate escalation. This isn’t just legal maneuvering—it’s the exploitation of personal tragedy in service of an unpopular anti-energy climate crusade.
Consider the case at the center of a new legal circus: Juliana Leon, 65, tragically died of hyperthermia during a 100-mile drive in a car with broken air conditioning, as a brutal heat wave pushed temperatures to 108 degrees Fahrenheit.
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The lawsuit leaps from this heartbreaking event to a sweeping claim: that a single hot day is the direct result of global warming.
The lawsuit preposterously links a very specific hot weather event to theorized global warming. Buckle up—their logic is about to take a wild ride.
Some activist scientists have further speculated that what may be a gradual long-term trend of slight warming thought to be both cyclical and natural, might be possibly exacerbated by the release of greenhouse gases. Some of these releases are the result of volcanic activity while some comes from human activities, including the burning of oil, natural gas and coal.
Grabbing onto that last, unproven thread, the plaintiffs have zeroed in on a handful of energy giants—BP, Chevron, Conoco, Exxon, Phillips 66, Shell, and the Olympic Pipe Company—accusing them of causing Leon’s death. Apparently, these few companies are to blame for the entire planet’s climate, while other oil giants, coal companies, and the billions of consumers who actually use these fuels get a free pass.
Meanwhile, “climate journalists” in the legacy media have ignored key details that will surely surface in court. Leon made her journey in a car with no air conditioning, despite forecasts warning of dangerous heat. She was returning from a doctor’s visit, having just been cleared to eat solid food after recent bariatric surgery.
But let’s be clear: this lawsuit isn’t about truth, justice, or even common sense. It’s lawfare, plain and simple.
Environmental extremists are using the courts to hijack national energy policy, aiming to force through a radical agenda they could never pass in Congress. A courtroom win would mean higher energy prices for everyone, the potential bankruptcy of energy companies, or their takeover by the so-called green industrial complex. For the trial lawyers, these cases are gold mines, with contingency fees that could reach hundreds of millions.
This particular lawsuit was reportedly pitched to Leon’s daughter by the left-leaning Center for Climate Integrity, a group bankrolled by billionaire British national Christopher Hohn through his Children’s Investment Fund Foundation and by the Rockefeller Foundation. It’s yet another meritless claim in the endless list of climate lawsuits that are increasingly being tossed out of courts across the country.
Earlier this year, a Pennsylvania judge threw out a climate nuisance suit against oil producers brought by Bucks County, citing lack of jurisdiction. In New York, Supreme Court Justice Anar Patel dismissed a massive climate lawsuit by New York City, pointing out the city couldn’t claim both public awareness and deception by oil companies in the same breath.
But the Washington State case goes even further, threatening to set a dangerous precedent: if it moves forward, energy companies could face limitless liability for any weather-related injury. Worse, it would give unwarranted credibility to the idea — floated by a leftwing activist before the U.S. Senate — that energy executives could be prosecuted for homicide, a notion that Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz rightly called “moonbeam, wacky theory.”
The courts must keep rejecting these absurd lawfare stunts. More importantly, America’s energy policy should be set by Congress—elected and accountable—not by a single judge in a municipal courtroom.
Jason Isaac is the founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute. He previously served four terms in the Texas House of Representatives.
From the Canadian Energy Centre
By Cody Ciona
‘Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests’
Billions of investment in new data centres is still expected in Alberta despite the province’s electric system operator placing a temporary limit on new large-load grid connections, said Carson Kearl, lead data centre analyst for Enverus Intelligence Research.
Kearl cited NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s estimate from earlier this year that building a one-gigawatt data centre costs between US$60 billion and US$80 billion.
That implies the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO)’s 1.2 gigawatt temporary limit would still allow for up to C$130 billion of investment.
“It’s got the potential to be extremely impactful to the Alberta power sector and economy,” Kearl said.
Importantly, data centre operators can potentially get around the temporary limit by ‘bringing their own power’ rather than drawing electricity from the existing grid.
In Alberta’s deregulated electricity market – the only one in Canada – large energy consumers like data centres can build the power supply they need by entering project agreements directly with electricity producers.
According to the AESO, there are 30 proposed data centre projects across the province.
The total requested power load for these projects is more than 16 gigawatts, roughly four gigawatts more than Alberta’s demand record in January 2024 during a severe cold snap.
For comparison, Edmonton’s load is around 1.4 gigawatts, the AESO said.
“Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests,” CEO Aaron Engen said in a statement.
“Because connecting all large loads seeking access would impair grid reliability, we established a limit that preserves system integrity while enabling timely data centre development in Alberta.”
As data centre projects come to the province, so do jobs and other economic benefits.
“You have all of the construction staff associated; electricians, engineers, plumbers, and HVAC people for all the cooling tech that are continuously working on a multi-year time horizon. In the construction phase there’s a lot of spend, and that is just generally good for the ecosystem,” said Kearl.
Investment in local power infrastructure also has long-term job implications for maintenance and upgrades, he said.
“Alberta is a really exciting place when it comes to building data centers,” said Beacon AI CEO Josh Schertzer on a recent ARC Energy Ideas podcast.
“It has really great access to natural gas, it does have some excess grid capacity that can be used in the short term, it’s got a great workforce, and it’s very business-friendly.”
The unaltered reproduction of this content is free of charge with attribution to the Canadian Energy Centre.
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