by Kevin Killough
Retirements of coal-fired power plants in the U.S. are being delayed or canceled, while nations in Europe and Asia are showing growing interest in American coal.
The Miami Coal Forum, an annual conference on topics concerning all aspects of the coal industry, wrapped up on Thursday. Emily Arthun, CEO of the American Coal Council, told Just the News that the event saw record-high attendance with over 200 people attending the three-day event.
Under the Biden-Harris administration, all fossil fuels faced ever increasing regulatory burdens, and the coal industry was not immune. The Environmental Protection Agency issued rules aimed at shutting down coal-fired power plants, including the “Good Neighbor” rule and the power plant rule, both of which were expected to drive up costs and lower reliability of the U.S. electricity grid.
In Wyoming, which produces 40% of the nation’s coal, the Bureau of Land Management approved a Resource Management Plan in November that blocked all new coal leases. Under these ongoing attacks, coal production peaked out in 2007, and it’s been declining ever since.
With the second Trump administration comes a whole new outlook on energy, including plenty of support for fossil fuel development. With the energy vision for America decidedly shifting, and a citizenry eschewing "green" products, even the coal industry is hoping to see some improvement.
“There’s definitely a level of reserved optimism,” Arthun said of the atmosphere at the coal conference. She said “reserved” because coal has been a whipping boy for climate activists going back to the Obama administration, and there’s no certainty how Congressional elections will turn out in two years or who will occupy the White House in 2029.
“Speed is of the essence. We need to be working together to get things done,” Arthun said.
Peak coal predictions and an all-time high
Coal consumption has been declining along with production in the U.S. as a result of coal plants being shut down and increased competition from cleaner-burning natural gas. While coal may not compete with gas on emissions, it’s cheaper and easier to transport and store than gas.
The U.S. was able to rapidly increase the amount of natural gas it produces as a result of shale technologies that unlocked gas from previously inaccessible deposits in hard rocks deep underground. Developing shale resources, however, requires infrastructure and technical expertise, and not all countries have shale resources to develop. This makes coal an attractive option in many cases. Shale oil is extracted from shale rock formations through surface mining or hydraulic fracturing ("fracking").
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has long predicted that global coal use was nearing its end. In 2015, the IEA claimed that the “golden age of coal in China seems to be over.” In 2024, China saw the highest level of construction of coal-power capacity in the past decade. India, the world’s second largest consumer of coal, uses more coal today than Europe and North America combined. The IEA’s latest coal report stated that global coal demand in 2024 was expected, when final figures are tallied, to have grown by 1% to an all-time high of 8.77 billion tons.
Energy expert Robert Bryce explains on his Substack that electricity drives economic growth, and coal is the easiest way to generate large amounts of the electricity.
“Burning coal also allows China and India to continue manufacturing, and exporting, a myriad of items — from solar panels and iPhones to clothing and jewelry — that Western consumers can’t imagine living without,” Bryce wrote.
Export opportunities
This means that there will be ongoing global demand for coal, and the industry is eyeing coal exports to ensure markets for its products. In 2023, the United States exported about 100 million short tons of coal to at least 71 countries. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, India was the largest purchaser of American coal, followed by Japan and the Netherlands.
West Virginia state Sen. Chris Rose, a Republican representing a district in the north of his state, has been speaking with representatives in Italy, Japan and India about importing more of West Virginia’s coal. It benefits the industry, he told Just the News, but also helps with Trump’s trade conflicts with China.
“My job is to promote my state’s coal, obviously, but I’m also advocating for the coal industry as a whole. Right now, a lot of countries…consume a lot of China’s coal and gas. And to help President Trump win this trade war, they could consume all the coal and gas we would sell to China, but it would be delivered to these other nations instead. Then, we won’t pay China’s tariffs,” Rose explained.
Arthun said there was a lot of talk of export opportunities at the coal conference this week. They had an increase in the number of international attendees, including people from Japan, Poland and South America.
While the U.S. has plenty of coal to mine and export, she said, the challenges lie in if it can be exported to foreign markets economically. There is a concern about export opportunities out of the West Coast, which has been hostile to building new export terminals, and the industry hopes to enhance export opportunities out of East Coast ports.
“If we can do it economically, international markets would like to have American coal,” Arthun said.
American consumption
Coal proponents may have hope for an improving domestic demand as well. A New York Times analysis from this week found that a third of the coal plants in the U.S. with planned retirement dates have either pushed those dates off or canceled their retirements. Energy Secretary Chris Wright this week told Bloomberg Television that the U.S. should stop closing coal-fired power plants.
“We are on a path to continually shrink the electricity we generate from coal. That has made electricity more expensive and our grid less stable,” Wright said, adding that it will be essential to the U.S. grid for decades to come.
During the extreme cold that descended on the U.S. during January, natural gas supplies in the Northeast were spread thin, and it was coal, along with oil, that kept New England residents from freezing, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Seeking regulatory certainty
Arthun said the industry is looking to work with Congress and the Trump administration to overturn some of the anti-coal regulations rolled out under the climate-focused Biden administration. The industry is also looking at creating more regulatory certainty that would make investments more secure.
Rose is sponsoring a bill that’s based on the Supreme Court ruling in West Virginia v. EPA, which determined that the EPA exceeded its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Rose’s bill would codify state sovereignty from federal environmental regulation and permitting.
“If upheld all the way by the Supreme Court, it would be a huge model piece of legislation for other energy states to follow,” Rose said.
While predictions of the end of coal are frequent, it appears, at least for now, that reports of coal’s death are wildly exaggerated.
Kevin Killough
Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/after-years-being-whipping-boy-climate-coal-industry-sees-brighter-future
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