Many in U.S. coal country oppose new emission regulations
Support of West Virginia crucial to passage of climate legislation.
By Agence France-Presse Sun, Nov 01 2009
CONTROVERSIAL COAL: Mountaintop removal mining proponents say the practice is efficient and provides jobs and flat land. Opponents see it as an ecological disaster. (Photo: ZUMA Press)
Coal super-powers China, India and the United States are set to dominate world climate talks next month, but even in the heartland of U.S. coal there are doubts their re-branded fuel can be part of the solution.
In the rugged tree-cloaked hills of rural West Virginia, coal is as much a way of life as bluegrass music, pickup trucks or the hundreds of wood-clad Baptist churches that spot the countryside.
Mountain tops have been removed to get it, endless trains hurtle across the state carrying it and atop roadside heaps every conceivable piece of industrial equipment is employed to lift, drop, clean or shift lumps of the black sooty rock.
Generations living in and around the Ohio River Valley — which forms the state’s southwestern flank — have mined coal, and earned a living doing so.
Coal is, almost literally, the bedrock of the local economy.
For negotiators packed in Copenhagen’s urbane conference rooms this December, Appalachia and its coal production will be a world away, but it could hardly be more relevant.
Responsible for 41 percent of global carbon dioxide energy emissions, coal is cheap, plentiful and increasingly popular.
Produces more carbon dioxide than oil, natural gas
It is also horrendously dirty — by far the most polluting fossil fuel according to the US government’s Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA’s figures show coal produces 50 percent more carbon dioxide than oil and twice as much as natural gas in electricity production.
And the future looks smoggier.
Global carbon emissions from coal are expected to triple between 2000 and 2050, according to a landmark study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published in 2007.
China, thanks to breakneck economic growth, is thought to build the equivalent of two medium sized coal plants per week, a direct challenge to any deal to tackle climate change.
But US usage is also growing, and with it political obstacles to a deal.
Opposition in West Virginia
West Virginia’s congressional representatives are loath to support emissions taxes, cap and trade or other carbon-reducing measures, which the industry warns will be crippling.
They will likely have to be won over if the US Congress is to pass climate legislation that would support a deal at Copenhagen.
With US coal supplying half of the country’s electricity needs, producers also have a substantial say.
But despite a massive campaign to re-brand the fuel as “clean coal,” many in the industry vehemently oppose new regulation to tackle climate changing “greenhouse gases.”
Still, in Copenhagen negotiators can count on support from one small portion of West Virginia’s coal industry, which sees the drive to green the smokestacks as a multibillion-dollar opportunity.
On the banks of the Ohio River this week, French engineering firm Alstom and the American Electric Power unveiled a facility that they say could help save the industry and the planet. Read Entire Article