Coal plants losing foothold in America

Coal has produced the inexpensive electricity that has underpinned American industry for more than a century. But a combination of new developments in natural gas, a ruthless war by environmental zealots, and a hostile administration and U.S. Senate is killing that option.

Here is the situation, as reported May 29 by The New York Times: Coal, which produced half the nation's electricity four years ago, now produces only a third of it. More than 100 of the 500-some coal-fired power plants in the nation likely will be shut down within a few years.

"We never thought we would get to a place where coal plants are falling so fast," said Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal initiative.

But it is happening.

In part that's because billionaire Mike Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, pumped $50 million into the effort.

Aubrey McClendon, the notoriously reckless chief of Chesapeake Energy, also gave the Sierra Club $26 million to damage his competitor for the U.S. energy market.

This strategy is working well.

Even when President Obama controlled both houses of Congress, he could not get his party to pass his plan to shut down coal. But that result is being achieved nonetheless.

"The environmentalists figure that if they can shut down a third of the nation's coal burning plants by 2020, emissions of greenhouse gases in the United States could be cut at least as much as they would have under a landmark 2009 climate bill that died in Congress," wrote Lipton.

Allowing commercial competitors and environmental zealots to design a national energy policy is not a responsible course of action. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives would do it differently, but the U.S. Senate is going along.

Yes, like every other source of energy, coal has its problems. But the Edison Electric Institute notes that the electric power industry as a whole has cut sulfur dioxide emissions and nitrogen oxide emissions by about 70 percent over 30 years.

Mercury emissions have been cut by about half, and ozone by 80 percent.

That's astonishing progress, but coal's critics have simply launched other assaults. They simply want to shut down coal, and they do not care about the economic or social consequences.

Americans may, but it may be too late.

— Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail