Kentucky Coal Blog

From Politico-

The Chamber of Commerce is targeting a provision in the Senate health care bill it says is a special legislative deal inserted by Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) that threatens the solvency of a trust fund created to help mine workers suffering from black lung disease.

“This had to be another one of those backrooms deals that was put into the larger bill to cobble votes together,” said Bruce Josten, the Chamber’s top lobbyist.

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March 4, 2010

By John McArdle, Roll Call Staff

Six weeks after the Supreme Court sent shock waves through the political world by lifting long-held bans on corporate and union involvement in federal elections, one district is looking ripe for the new rules to be put into play.

The entire article may be viewed at http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_98/politics/43818-1.html

 (c) Copyright 2008 Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved.

By Jim Snyder

Natural gas lobbyists, who felt their industry got the short shrift in climate legislation, are pushing new incentives to encourage utilities to switch from coal to natural gas.
 
In doing so, the sector is starting a lobbying fight with the coal industry, which has long and deep ties on Capitol Hill and is determined to hold onto its role as the dominant source of electricity in the United States.

Lobbyists for natural gas companies were heartened by reports that President Barack Obama would announce during a speech on the economy last Wednesday a program to encourage utilities to displace coal with natural gas.

The president’s speech was to validate a lobbying campaign to promote the industry’s profile in Washington that has built on new discoveries of huge natural gas reserves in shale rock formations in Texas and the Northeast. But the president ended up only reiterating his support for comprehensive energy and climate legislation in his speech before the Business Roundtable on Wednesday, without mentioning natural gas specifically.
 
Natural gas releases about half of the carbon emissions as coal when burned. According to the Congressional Research Service, displacing older coal plants with nearby natural gas facilities could cut greenhouse gas emissions from the utility sector by 20 percent. The report, however, also raised unanswered questions about the feasibility of such a switch.
 
Coal now accounts for around 50 percent of the electricity produced in the United States; natural gas, around 20 percent.
 
But the fight is just getting started, after years in which energy sectors co-existed peacefully by not challenging one another directly. Climate legislation has strained relations.
 
America’s Natural Gas Alliance, a trade group formed to bring cohesion to the industry’s lobbying efforts split among producers, pipelines and distribution companies, has spent $1.6 million on lobbying since starting in 2009. Its founders say the annual budget could reach $80 million.
 
The alliance has spent some of its money promoting a reversal of the coal-natural gas ratio of electricity production.
 
Industry lobbyists say the need for the revived campaign was underscored by the House climate bill.
 
The measure included enough incentives for “clean” coal and renewable energy that natural gas use would actually decline in upcoming years, according to the Energy Information Administration, even though natural gas is cleaner than coal and more dependable than the wind or the sun.
 
The climate bill and the fact that Obama failed to mention natural gas among his energy priorities in his first major address to Congress after his Inauguration has left the natural gas industry with middle-child-like insecurities that it is trying hard to put behind it.
 
Three gas groups — the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, and the Natural Gas Supply Association — called for natural gas to be included in a “clean energy standard” that would mandate use of lower carbon fuels and renewable energy sources.
 
A clean energy standard could force some utilities to replace coal with natural gas.
 
“It’s time for policymakers to recognize the new domestic supply reality for natural gas,” said Donald Santa, president of INGAA, said in a release.
 
Other proposals floated include loan guarantees to help utilities finance natural gas plants, or tax incentives to encourage power companies to shut down their dirtiest coal facilities.
 
“ANGA members want to see proposals that recognize that an increased use of natural gas gives this country an extraordinary opportunity, right now, to both accelerate greenhouse gas emissions reductions and advance our clean-energy economy,” said ANGA President and CEO Regina Hopper in an email response to questions.
 
The coal industry rests its carbon-constrained future on “clean” coal technologies that would sequester and store CO2. Coal-powered utilities are responsible for around 33 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions from human activity in the United States.
 
In the near-term, though, coal lobbyists continue to stress the economic advantages of the fossil fuel.
 
The National Mining Association, the coal industry’s main trade group, put out a preemptive press release prior to the president’s speech that said displacing coal with natural gas would hurt the economy.
 
“Creation of an artificial electricity generation market for natural gas in place of affordable, abundant and reliable coal is bad public policy and undermines the administration’s economic and energy objectives,” said Hal Quinn, president and CEO of the mining group.
 
One coal lobbyist was putting together a fact sheet challenging the natural gas industry’s 100-year supply claim and noting historic and projected cost differences between coal and natural gas.
 
Climate legislation would likely reduce coal use, but the industry has proved remarkably adept at surviving in a difficult political climate.
 
A coal caucus formed in January by Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) has grown to 68 members, including 28 Democrats.
 
The House-passed bill included tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to help the industry develop carbon-capturing technologies thanks in large measure to a Democrat: Rep. Rick Boucher, who comes from a coal-producing district in Virginia.
 
Besides the National Mining Association, the industry is promoted by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, which has worked to build a grassroots network for coal over the past several years.
 
Because everyone uses electricity, the fight between coal and natural gas will draw in other groups as well.
 
Coal counts the support of railroads — another venerable Washington power — that get a large portion of revenues from transporting coal.
 
Chemical and fertilizer industries use natural gas as a feedstock. Those and other groups that use it as a raw material are worried that if utilities use more of it, the cost — and thus the cost of their products — could increase as well.
 
“We’re concerned if there is a fuel switch that it’s going to affect the price and availability of fertilizer that our folks need,” said Rick Krause, a lobbyist for the American Farm Bureau Federation.
 
Natural gas lobbyists, however, insist that times have changed and that new discoveries and greater use of drilling techniques, like hydraulic fracturing that allow access to gas in shale rock formations, change the debate in their industry’s favor.

By Robin Bravender

U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson today defended the science underpinning pending climate regulations despite Senate Republicans’ claims that global warming data has been thrown into doubt.

“The science behind climate change is settled, and human activity is responsible for global warming,” Jackson told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “That conclusion is not a partisan one.”

Jackson’s comments came as the Senate panel scrutinized President Obama’s $10 billion budget request for EPA. The administration’s fiscal 2011 proposal would cut the agency’s total funding by about $300 million from 2010 levels while allotting $56 million — including $43 million in new funding — for regulatory programs to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Senate Republicans used the hearing as a platform to blast EPA over its plans to begin rolling out greenhouse gas regulations next month after it determined last year that the heat-trapping emissions endanger human health and welfare.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the panel’s ranking member, called on EPA to reconsider that determination after recent reports have revealed errors in the reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that were used to underpin EPA’s finding and a recent controversy surrounding e-mails stolen from climate scientists that some have dubbed “Climategate.”

“We’ve been told that the science still stands,” Inhofe said. “We’ve been told that the IPCC’s mistakes are trivial. We’ve been told that Climategate is just gossipy e-mails between a few scientists.

“But now we know there’s no objective basis for these claims,” he added. “Furthermore, Climategate shows there’s no ‘consensus;’ the science is far from settled.”

Committee Republicans released a report today detailing concerns over the content of the e-mails that were lifted last year from computers at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, a research institute whose studies help form the basis of the IPCC reports.

Some of the e-mails reveal frustration with attacks from global warming skeptics, and opponents of greenhouse gas regulations have pointed to several of the exchanges as proof that scientists intentionally withheld climate data.

The Obama administration, as well as the majority of climate scientists and Democratic lawmakers, have maintained that nothing in the e-mails upends the scientific consensus that man-made emissions are contributing to climate change.

Jackson said that although science “can be a bit messy, the dust will settle” and that she has not seen anything at this point to show that the endangerment finding is not on solid ground.

“I do not agree that the IPCC has been totally discredited in any way,” Jackson said, adding that it is important to understand that the IPCC is a body that follows open and impartial practices.

“Let me be very clear,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) the committee chairwoman. “The majority of this committee believes in strong numbers that we must act,” on global warming, she added.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) angrily blasted his Republican colleagues for their implications that global warming science had not been settled. “This country faces many many problems, not the least of which, we have national leaders rejecting basic science,” Sanders said. “I find it incredible, I really do, that in the year 2010 on this committee, there are people who are saying there is a doubt about global warming. There is no doubt about global warming.”

By Associated Press-

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — State Police charged three anti-mountaintop removal mining activists with trespassing and obstruction Thursday after they defied a federal court order and invaded a Massey Energy office in Southern West Virginia.

 Climate Ground Zero founder Mike Roselle and associates Joseph Hamsher and Tom Smyth were taken to Raleigh County Magistrate Court for arraignment after they occupied the Marfork Coal Co. office near Pettus.

 All three were lodged in Southern Regional Jail in Beaver, with Roselle and Hamsher held on $5,000 cash bonds and Smyth held on $7,000 cash bond.

 Virginia-based Massey issued a statement offering a dramatic account of the morning protest, describing how “three criminals clad in fatigues and carrying chains invaded a company office and chained themselves to chairs in the lobby. A terrified receptionist went into shock and was transported by ambulance to a local hospital.”

 The claim about the secretary could not immediately be verified by State Police in Whitesville, who did not return repeated telephone messages.

 Massey provided photographs showing Hamsher and Smyth in camouflage jackets and Roselle in a blue parka.

“They are now trying to provoke Massey members into a confrontation,” Chief Executive Officer Don Blankenship said, labeling them “domestic terrorists.” He said they “are part of an anti-coal group that wants to shut down mining in Appalachia and destroy West Virginia’s economy.”

 By Amy GardnerThursday, February 18, 2010

WISE, VA. — The anger at Washington that is seeping across the country registered a while back in the high ridges of Appalachia, a once-indomitable Democratic stronghold where voters turned away from President Obama in 2008 just as overwhelmingly as they embraced him most everywhere else.

By Becky Malkovich, The Southern | Posted: Wednesday, February 17, 2010

MOUNT VERNON – With four coal mines under construction and another seven with permits to build pending, the Illinois coal industry is poised for a rebound.

However, Illinois Coal Association President Phillip M. Gonet warned a crowd gathered at a coal symposium Tuesday in Mount Vernon, there are challenges to overcome before coal can be pronounced king again.

The symposium was sponsored by the Tedrick Group and featured industry experts discussing the latest trends in research and development as well as potential obstacles the industry faces.

Gonet said some of the biggest challenges to the revival of the coal industry include proposed cap-and-trade legislation that would limit carbon emissions. While the legislation is stalled, if passed, “It would kill the coal industry.”

Another challenge is posed by the Sierra Club and other environmental groups, he said.

“The Sierra Club is actively involved in every permit now, and that adds to the cost of doing business and lengthens the entire permitting process,” he said.

For instance, the permitting process for one Illinois mine included an administrative hearing that went on for nearly a year, he said.

“So the staff was in the hearing for almost a year going over challenges, rather than working on new permits,” he said. “That kind of thing has two negative affects: It slows down the permitting process and causes companies who are looking at Illinois to say, ‘Why go there when it will cost us so much more money?’ We need an expedited permitting process and we need a state that is friendly to business.”

Other topics of discussion included gasification developments, coal mine and bed methane, productivity advances and sequestration.

John Mead of the Coal Research Center at Southern Illinois University said the symposium focused on recent research and development and how those apply to what is happening with the coal industry.

“Right now we’re looking at how government and industry respond to the changing energy and environmental needs. Also very important is how can we match that with technology developments?” Mead said. “How do we keep pace with the regulatory changes and how are regulatory changes recognizing the state of technology? How do we move the research and development into commercial uses?”

Illinois, he said, is on the leading edge of clean coal technology.

“That’s so important for the future of the industry in Illinois,” he said.

By STEPHEN POWER And BEN CASSELMAN

Three big companies quit an influential lobbying group that had focused on shaping climate-change legislation, in the latest sign that support for an ambitious bill is melting away.

Oil giants BP PLC and ConocoPhillips and heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. said Tuesday they won’t renew their membership in the three-year-old U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a broad business-environmental coalition that had been instrumental in building support in Washington for capping emissions of greenhouse gases.

The move comes as debate over climate change intensifies and concerns mount about the cost of capping greenhouse-gas emissions.

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