“We’ve had a lot of economic growth but haven’t had real development because of the nature of resource extraction,” Ted Boettner, executive director of the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, told me. Most profits from extraction are funneled outside the state or to already wealthy executives within it. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, recently visited West Virginia while compiling a report on the U.S. and noted state residents’ startling lack of access to broadband and drinkable water.
“West Virginia has billions of dollars in legacy costs from coal mining: deteriorating roads, pension liabilities, health care liabilities, and liabilities due to surface mining,” Boettner said in an interview. “We could be spending lots of money putting people to work cleaning up the mess that has been made by the coal industry.”
Far better for West Virginia than temporarily propping up coal plants, Boettner said, would be more robust federal investment. He pointed to the RECLAIM Act — a bill introduced last year that would release $1 billion to help reclaim abandoned mine lands, fuel investment in Appalachia, and diversify the economy away from extraction — as an example of a measure that would help the state. Both of West Virginia’s senators have supported the RECLAIM Act, though Boettner said it hasn’t been a major priority for either of them. (The legislation has languished in the House after its passage through the House Natural Resources Committee, and a Senate version sits in a similar limbo.)
West Virginia’s traditionally low fuel prices have skyrocketed in recent years because of the state’s over-reliance on coal-fired power generation amid the rise of natural gas, Boettner explained. Remedying fuel costs and the other economic issues facing West Virginia demands changes much more far-reaching than subsidies to coal plants. “Instead of more corporate welfare for the coal industry, our state’s congressional delegation in Washington should be looking for ways to give West Virginians more energy sources,” he said. “I think we’re sort of whistling past the graveyard of the clean energy revolution.”
"The Trump administration is unilaterally reshaping the United States under the cover of national security. The White House’s justification for its “zero tolerance” policy of separating families at the border was based on the president’s powers over national security.
President Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban was justified on grounds of national security, as are his vague “extreme vetting” proposals for visa applicants. Now, his Energy Department is looking to reshape the energy industry and reverse the trend away from coal-fired power plants. Their justification?
National security.
Yet in the case of the energy industry, nobody is buying the rationale, and the radical intervention into energy markets has produced an odd-bedfellows coalition of opposition that includes the oil and gas industry, renewable energy companies, and environmentalists.
On the other side, in support of the White House, stands the coal and nuclear industry, headed up by Murray Energy and First Energy, who’ve long lobbied for just such a lifeline.
Speaking at the World Gas Conference this week in Washington, Energy Secretary Rick Perry assured the government and industry representatives present that the U.S. is working to “honor the right of every nation to use every available fuel at its disposal. I wish I can tell you the entire developed world is on board with our vision. They are not.”
Neither is much of the oil and gas industry that was gathered before him.
Thanks to his plan to bail out struggling power plants — a measure opposed by the likes of the American Petroleum Institute — Perry now finds himself caught in the crosshairs between two dueling arms of the fossil fuel industry."
FROM:
https://theintercept.com/2018/06/29/coal-bailout-rick-perry-department-of-energy/
