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From the Newly Released American Coal Magazine
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Leveraging R&D Strength to a Sustainable Future for Coal
By Daniel Connell, CONSOL Energy Inc.
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For a decade or more, coal has been a political football and a lightning rod for the unfolding transformation of the energy landscape. Massive geopolitical shifts and technological advances have left stakeholders asking: is there a sustainable future for coal? Just 20 years ago, coal accounted for over 50 percent of the electricity mix in the United States. Declining domestic coal demand has reduced that to roughly 20 percent in 2020. Pressures from competing energy resources, investors, government…
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Using Captured CO₂ in Everyday Products Could Help Fight Climate Change, But Will Consumers Want Them?
By Lucca Henrion, Joe Árvai, Lauren Lutzke and Volker Sick, The Conversation
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WALTHAM, MA (May 14, 2021) – Would you drink carbonated beverages made with carbon dioxide captured from the smokestack of a factory or power plant?
How would you feel if that captured carbon dioxide were in your child’s toys, or in the concrete under your house?
The technology to capture climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions from smokestacks, and even from the air around us, already exists; so too does the technology to use this carbon dioxide to make products like plastics, concrete...
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Obstacles to Carbon-Free Electricity by 2035
By Staff, America’s Power
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WASHINGTON, DC (May 31, 2021) – President Biden has set a goal to achieve carbon-free electricity by 2035 and pledged to establish an “Energy Efficiency and Clean Energy Standard” as a way to achieve this goal. Without major technology breakthroughs, this goal would mean eliminating the production of electricity from coal and natural gas within the next 15 years, even though fossil fuels provide more than 60 percent of the nation’s electricity…
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Biden Vows to Support Struggling Appalachian Counties. But Residents are Weary of Failed Promises.
By Mason Adams, Southerly
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INEZ, KY (June 2, 2021) – Coal communities in Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia are struggling to support basic civic services as coal disappears. Federal funding to boost local economies and jobs is closer than ever before.
Nina McCoy has been waiting for an answer to a question for 40 years: What happens to a coal county and the people who live in it when all the coal is gone? She still has the 1981 articles from when both the New York Times and the...
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Judge: US Can’t Delay Challenge to Public Land Coal Sales
By Matthew Brown, Associated Press
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BILLINGS, MT (June 4, 2021) – A U.S. judge has rejected the Biden administration’s attempt to delay a lawsuit from several states and environmentalists who are seeking to end lease sales for coal mining on federal lands.
The coal leasing program was temporarily shut down under President Barack Obama because of concerns about climate change, and then revived by the Trump administration. There have been few sales in the years since because the use of coal has plummeted as utilities turn to...
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EPA Leader Sees ‘Huge Potential’ for Carbon Capture in North Dakota
By Amy R. Sisk, The Bismarck Tribune
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BISMARCK, ND (June 3, 2021) – The nation’s top environmental regulator indicated in a visit to Bismarck on Thursday that he's impressed by North Dakota’s efforts to capture carbon emissions from coal and ethanol plants.
A number of projects are in development across the state to contain the carbon dioxide generated by those facilities, rather than allow the gas to continue to enter the atmosphere where it contributes to climate change.
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Shut Off From Conventional Capital, US Coal Companies Seek Creative Options
By Taylor Kuykendall, S&P Global Market Intelligence
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NEW YORK, NY (June 2, 2021) – The U.S. coal sector has limited access to capital, in large part due to concerns about the industry’s environmental impacts and its long-term viability, but some companies have found ways to tap into alternative financing.
Increased investor focus on environmental, social, and governance issues has been increasing the pressure on the U.S. coal sector, particularly for producers supplying coal to domestic electricity generators. While the COVID-19 pandemic weighed on the broader economy in 2020…
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Nuclear Capacity Increases by 4.5 GW in Long-Delayed ‘MOPRed’ PJM Auction, Coal Loses 8 GW
By Catherine Morehouse, Utility Dive
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WASHINGTON, DC (June 3, 2021) – Dive Brief:
• Total costs dropped $4.4 billion and prices dropped to $50/MW-day compared to the previous auction, during PJM’s years-delayed capacity auction concluded on Wednesday, due largely to lower load forecasts, which translated to lower reliability requirements, according to the grid operator.
• Nuclear generation cleared the most additional capacity compared to the previous capacity auction…
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Wyoming to be ‘Ground Zero’ for Advanced Nuclear Plant
By Joel Funk, WyoFile
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CHEYENNE, WY (June 3, 2021) – Wyoming will become “ground zero” as home to the first of a new generation of nuclear power plants to be developed via a diverse public-private partnership that includes Bill Gates, officials announced Wednesday.
The advanced nuclear energy demonstration plant will replace one of four coal-fired plants in PacifiCorp’s Wyoming power system: either Jim Bridger near Rock Springs, Naughton in Kemmerer, Dave Johnston near Glenrock or WyoDak in Campbell County.
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Few Assurances for Fishermen in Federal Offshore Wind Approval
By Alex Kuffner, The Providence Journal
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PROVIDENCE, RI (May 15, 2021) – Offshore wind developers have assured the commercial fishing industry all along that the thousands of massive turbines that they want to install in the ocean up and down the East Coast won’t block fishermen from waters where they make their living.
But the final approval issued this week for Vineyard Wind 1, the nation’s first major offshore wind farm, offers few guarantees to commercial fishermen.
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The IEA’s ‘Roadmap’ for Net-Zero is Full of Dead Ends
Robert Bryce, author and journalist, via Real Clear Energy
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AUSTIN, TX (May 25, 2021) – The academics and bureaucrats who create models that claim we can run the global economy solely on renewable energy live in a different world than you and me. In their world, there is no shortage of money, land, or commodities like copper, cobalt, and lithium.
In the modelers’ world, wind turbines don’t slaughter birds and bats by the hundreds of thousands per year. The scenarios that they produce ignore the fact that the world’s transportation system runs almost exclusively on refined...
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Electric La-La Land — Handing China the Metals Card
By Jordan McGillis, Institute for Energy Research, via National Review
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WASHINGTON, DC (May 31, 2021) – While Joe Biden was out for a spin in Ford’s new electric F-150 earlier this month, the International Energy Agency (IEA) was sounding the alarm on the mismatch between policies forcing an energy transition and the availability of the critical minerals that would make it feasible.
The IEA’s report, “The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions,” presents a sobering account of the geopolitical and environmental risks arising out of this mismatch, undercutting the credibility of wind, solar, and battery storage in turn.
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The Energy Transition Won’t Happen Without Secure Mineral Supply Chains
David Blackmon, Forbes
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MANSFIELD, TX (May 30, 2021) – The very real issues related to the supply chains of an array of critical minerals needed to facilitate the “energy transition” that has become such an en vogue subject in 2021 receive very little attention from the energy-related news media. When I asked Lewis Black, CEO and President of Almonty, a major global producer of the mineral tungsten, why he thinks that’s the case, he responded by saying that “If you’re telling everyone you’re going to have the greatest garden party ever, the last thing they would want is somebody saying ‘yeah, but it could rain.’”
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Upcoming ACC Events
Coal Market Strategies – August 9-11, 2021
Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn, Sonoma, California
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