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From The Charleston Gazette
By: Sen. Truman Chafin
NOW, more than ever, we need coal! Tuesday, July 6, electricity demand in the East surged to levels near those in the summer of 2006. With temperatures soaring above 100 degrees in cities from New York to Washington, utilities and grid operators witnessed power output close to the 2006 records. Fortunately, the power grid has been up to the task, thus far.
An engineer at John Amos elaborated that the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland Interconnection, "PJM", is stressed to near breaking. PJM is near max capacity, and it has been said that the grid may hiccup in the following days due to the extreme heat. One result of this misfortune, would be to shed load and cut off big users, which would essentially cause layoffs to keep the grid from crashing.
The increased demand is straining the system as it is; yet, there is another component that is frequently scrutinized but essential for the grid survival, which is coal.
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By: Rep. Shelley Moore Capito
Through the Environmental Protection Agency, Washington continues to push an anti-coal agenda. It amounts to an assault on an industry that employs more than 500,000 hardworking Americans and supplies nearly half of America’s electricity.
The EPA’s attempts to control climate change through regulation and stall the approval of mining permits can only lead to coal states like West Virginia bearing the brunt of poorly thought-out policies that translate into greater job loss and higher energy costs.
President Barack Obama is intent on passing legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions. Should Congress fail to act, the EPA will exert its regulatory authority in an unprecedented manner that will have far-reaching effects on nearly every sector of the U.S. economy — from higher prices at the gas pump to skyrocketing utility bills.
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Time is of the essence as the reserved rooms and air travel arrangements must be committed in the next couple of weeks. Please go to: www.nationaltravel.com for complete information.
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The 7th Annual Friends of Coal Auto Fair is set for July 16 – 18 at the YMCA Paul Cline Memorial Youth Sports Complex in Beckley, WV. Friday, July 16 will begin the Fair with the Cruise-In to uptown Beckley for the Renaissance Car Show and live entertainment by former American Idol contestant and Beckley native, Robbie Carrico.
Saturday will have the Live in Concert by The Charlie Daniels Band and Taylor Made, with special appearances by The Gold Knights Army Parachute Team and FOC spokesmen Coach Nehlen, Coach Pruett and Bass Master Jeremy Starks. Tickets ($15.00 advance & $20.00 day of show) for the Concert will go on sale May 1st at select WV & VA Marquee Cinemas and the Beckley-Raleigh County YMCA.
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Representatives of the West Virginia Coal Association and the Friends of Coal will be busy the next few months. Continuing our outreach efforts around the state, the Friends of Coal has already scheduled the following events:
∙ (July 17) The Friends of Coal Auto Fair in Beckley and the Mark Plants’ Football Camp in Charleston.
∙ (August 13-20) We are finalizing our participation schedule for this year’s State Fair of West Virginia in Lewisburg.
If you would like to schedule a representative of the Friends of Coal or the West Virginia Coal Association for your event, please contact us at 304.342.4153. Our schedules are filling fast and we very much want to meet with your group to provide an accurate portrait of our state’s coal industry.
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A new national survey commissioned by the Institute for Energy Research found that 70 percent of Americans oppose new energy taxes that will drive up domestic energy costs even further. The survey also finds that the same percentage do not believe such a tax would have a discernible effect on global warming.
“The American people are smarter than the political class in Washington think,” said IER president Thomas Pyle. “There is no interest in pushing through a radical agenda in the name of global warming and there is no interest on the part of consumers to pay more at the pump for a gallon of gasoline.”
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, voted last month for an amendment by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, that would have blocked the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases. The amendment failed on a 53-47 vote, but the senators who voted to restrain the EPA apparently have strong public opinion on their side.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/poll-70-percent-of-americans-reject-cap-and-trade-98033709.html#ixzz0tC0jRb8g
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The Obama administration and the U.S. EPA continued their assault on coal and coal-fired power plants this past week with proposed new rules announced Tuesday that will result in utilities, and their ratepayers to pay an addition $2.8 billion a year in added annual costs by 2014 by the EPA’s own estimation.
The emissions plan is most recent in a string of regulations and legislation that the Obama Administration and the EPA have passed that hampers the use of coal for power generation in this country. Currently coal accounts for almost half of the nation’s electrical generation.
Utilities immediately raised concerns about their ability to meet the new standards by the 2012 deadline, especially if they have to install new technology to meet the standards. The EPA estimates about 180 coal-fired power plants will have to install new technology. Some facilities could wind up being shut down. The agency expects the new rules will increase electricity prices by about two percent annually, estimates industry experts question as potentially low.
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The State Journal printed an op-ed by West Virginia Coal Association President Bill Raney in response to the recent report by the Morgantown-based anti-coal group Downstream Strategies, suggesting that the industry costs the state more than it provides.
In his response, Raney took the report to task. “Instead of being a “definitive cost-benefit analysis” of the coal industry, the study actually looks only at the amount of taxes the industry pays versus the author’s “estimates” of what the industry costs the state’s taxpayers. The authors then further restrict their estimates by only looking at some of the taxes paid by the industry (completely ignoring the $90 million in property taxes paid by the industry to the counties) and seriously understating others,” Raney wrote.
Unbelievably, the study also left out the $3.6 billion the industry and its supporting vendors and service companies pay each year in wages. Clearly this report falls far short of providing a thorough look at the economics of the state’s coal industry,” Raney continued. The column has also been submitted to other print publications around the state.
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West Virginia Coal Association President Bill Raney was the guest speaker at the Martinsburg Chamber of Commerce monthly breakfast meeting Friday, July 9. Raney provided an overview of the importance of coal to the state’s economy with a focus on the impact the state’s coal production has even on areas of the state where coal is not produced, such as the Eastern Panhandle. Raney outlined the basic findings of the joint study released earlier this year by the West Virginia University/Marshall University business research groups, which showed total economic impact to the state of some 63,000 jobs and the $25.5 billion in total business volume generated by the industry in the state each year. He also noted $630,000 in severance money received by just the three easternmost counties in the Panhandle and that a significant amount of the $26 million the industry pays to support the state’s infrastructure bond fund goes to projects in the area. Raney also joined FACES’ Jay Murphy in encouraging the Chamber to sign the petition supporting FACES.
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