The Environmental Protection Agency under President Barack Obama has waged a war on coal, striking a blow against a crucial component of West Virginia’s economy, lawmakers said Wednesday during a field hearing of the of the Senate Environment and Public Works Clean Air and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee, in the city of Logan.
The EPA’s regulations on the coal-fired electricity, including the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule and the Clean Power Plan carbon emissions standards, have placed another obstacle to an industry already struggling in an ever-more competitive marketplace, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said during the hearing, noting the low cost of natural gas.
“We’ve always ridden the markets; we’ve just never had the federal government jump on our back and try to drown us during these difficult times. It’s also clear to me that there was no, and is no, consideration by this administration of how West Virginia will secure a role in the nation’s clean energy future,” he said.
Manchin said West Virginia has lost 13,000 coal jobs since 2008 and that parts of the state have moved passed a recession and into a depression. Manchin did not attribute those job losses solely to EPA regulations, noting a current energy market that does not favor coal. Nonetheless, he said, the EPA is working beyond the will of Congress to place this heavy burden on his state. “The EPA under this administration has taken it upon itself to legislate a climate agenda that Congress never authorized,” he said. “We haven’t had one input. We’re just playing defense all the way through.”
West Virginia has taken the lead in a lawsuit filed by nearly 30 states and a host of energy producers, utilities, and trade organizations against the Clean Power Plan. A federal appeals court heard the case late last month, and an appeal to the Supreme Court – no matter how the lower court rules – appears assured.
Drawing on the war metaphor, James Van Nostrand, director of the West Virginia University College of Law Center for Energy and Sustainable Development, argued that in taking aim at the EPA’s regulations, the state is ignoring more destructive forces. “In terms of [the Clean Power Plan’s] impact, it’s something like a shoulder-fired rocket launcher, a tool to be deployed in minor skirmishes, but it’s not going to win a war,” he said in testimony before the subcommittee. “We’re spending all our time and energy talking about the casualties we are suffering in this war from things getting occasionally blown up with a rocket launcher. The real heavy fire is coming from economics, and geology, and international concern about climate change.”
Not only is the state focused on the wrong foe, but it is also in a sense shooting itself in the foot by resisting the nation’s changing energy system, Van Nostrand said. “We are getting killed by friendly fire. For the last several years virtually everything that we have done in the state has been in the wrong direction from what it takes us to position ourselves well in this new energy economy,” he said.
One way to correct course is through the development of carbon capture and storage technology, which several witnesses testifying before a three-member panel of lawmakers mentioned. “We need … a major infusion of [research and development] capital, both federal and private, to lower the cost of carbon capture technologies so that coal can continue to play a vital role in baseload power generation,” said Eugene Trisko, counsel for the United Mine Workers of America.
Van Nostrand also noted carbon capture as a solution to the state’s current predicament. “I think it’s more about innovation. That’s the way we solve problems in America is we innovate, and we solve things. We invent things, and so developing the resources for clean coal technology, let’s talk about burning this stuff more cleanly, being able to capture the carbon, that’s the future,” he said.
West Virginia was home to American Electric Power’s Mountaineer CCS project, which was canceled in 2011 due to the lack of a federal climate policy in the U.S., according to AEP.
Manchin chimed in as well in support of CCUS technology, saying it is unreasonable to expect developing economies will stop burning coal – so the U.S. should develop the technology to help them do it more cleanly. “We had better get with it and develop the technologies so that we can use coal in a cleaner fashion,” he said.
