Steven Mufson reports that when coal was king, it fueled more than half of the U.S. electricity. It fired up American industry and powered an ever-growing variety of household appliances and electronics. And American presidential hopefuls paid homage to coal, courting mine owners and miners whose unionized ranks once numbered more than 400,000. President Obama was no exception. As a state legislator in 2004 and again as a U.S. senator, he supported proposals for huge federal subsidies to turn coal into motor fuel and ease American reliance on oil imports. With the right technological innovations, coal has the potential to be a cleaner-burning, domestic alternative to imported oil, Obama said in June 2007. Also see:
https://i2mconsultants.com/downloads/corp/campbelljustnotforburning-july19-2014col.pdf
But all of that has changed. On Monday, the Obama administration takes on the coal industry with the final version of rules it has dubbed the Clean Power Plan, a complex scheme designed to reduce, on a state-by-state basis, the amount of greenhouse gases the electric power sector emits. The main target - coal.
Today, more people in the U.S. work jobs installing solar panels than work in the coal industry. Ideas for using liquefied coal for cars never materialized. Industrial users have become more efficient. And the coal share of electricity generation is waning, with natural gas and renewable energy taking its place. Only a handful of coal power plants have been built in recent years, and the Sierra Club keeps a tally of canceled coal-fired power plants like trophies on the wall.
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