The President's War on Coal

Representative Doc Hastings, chairman of the Committee on Natural Resources, published an op-ed in Politico today highlighting the Obama administration’s campaign against coal and affordable energy. While the administration certainly preaches an “all of the above” energy policy, their actions penalize and demonize coal and other affordable and reliable sources of energy.

While the President is not living up to his “all of the above” promises, he is certainly doing his best to reach his goal of bankrupting the coal industry while forcing electricity prices to skyrocket. The decision to rewrite and increase existing regulations on the coal industry will lead to the closure of a number of coal-fired power plants.

As Representative Hastings, using information from the U.S. Energy Information Administration pointed out, this war on affordable energy not only hinders job creation, but it could severely cut a number of already existing jobs while increasing electricity costs for Americans.

“Since his election, the president has tried at every turn to make that goal a reality — ardently supporting a cap-and-trade national energy tax and imposing onerous regulations on coal production. The president and his administration are waging a war on coal.

The nonpartisan U.S. Energy Information Administration has all but confirmed the president’s aggressive war on coal with a report detailing a record number of coal-fired power plants to be closed this year — largely because of burdensome regulations and other compliance costs. Worse, 175 coal-fired power plants are scheduled to be shut down from 2012 to 2016, EIA estimated, requiring 27 gigawatts of electricity — enough to power 27 million homes — to be replaced by more expensive forms of energy.

The shuttering of record numbers of coal-fired power plants threatens thousands of the 555,270 direct and indirect coal-related jobs that help supply America with nearly half of its generated electricity and pay $36 billion in wages.”

Coal reliably and affordably produces about 40 percent of the electricity generated in the United States. Closing coal-fired power plants means that electricity prices will rise to pay for new facilities. This is just one more reason that the economy continues to sputter in much of the U.S.