Coal, the fading powerhouse of the U.S. electricity system, is about to see its fortunes turn even darker.
New Biden administration pollution regulations released Thursday will make it more expensive for energy companies to keep burning coal. The industry is losing two of its most powerful advocates in Congress, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. And last month’s collapse of the Key Bridge in Baltimore choked off a crucial export conduit for coal producers whose domestic markets have dimmed during the past two decades.
The industry still has supporters in Congress, who are mobilizing to oppose President Joe Biden’s latest regulatory assault on carbon pollution from coal plants. But coal’s place in the economy has been in dramatic decline for years, displaced by cheap, abundant natural gas and the rise of renewable power as electricity producers bowed to demands to address climate change and the rising costs of abating pollution. The country’s coal output has dropped by half since peaking in 2008.
Now the U.S. has a fleet of aging power plants that are slipping toward retirement — pushed on their way by persistent legal pressure from environmentalists who are hailing the new regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency.
“This does mark an important inflection point,” said Mary Anne Hitt, who as head of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign spent years stopping new coal plants from being built and forcing others to close.
But despite coal-fired power plants contributing just 16 percent of U.S. electricity last year, compared with about half two decades ago — and forecasts from the U.S. Energy Information Administration that more than 20 percent of the existing coal power plants will close by 2030 — the sector still wields some political might in Washington.
That means the industry can still wage fierce political fights like the one brewing over Biden’s latest regulations, Hitt said.
“I think the coal industry still has powerful friends in Washington and still is a force to be reckoned with in our political system — but not in the way that it once was,” said Hitt, who hails from West Virginia and is now the senior director of U.S. initiatives at the philanthropic foundation Climate Imperative.
Coal’s remaining political support will be out in force to fight the new measures the Biden EPA unveiled: a climate rule that will require power companies to cut carbon dioxide emissions from coal power plants by 90 percent if they intend to operate past 2039. The agency also issued separate regulations governing coal plants’ hazardous air pollution, wastewater and toxic ash waste. Taken together, those rules are widely expected to accelerate coal-fired power plant retirements, if the regulations survive their inevitable court challenges.
While recognizing it’s no longer the dominant juggernaut it once was, the coal industry says it still has plenty of support among lawmakers.
“We’re pretty confident that we’ve got a great bench that is stepping forward,” said Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association.
McConnell, who will relinquish his role as the Senate Republican leader in November, has long used his legislative power to benefit his home state and its coal industry, including by attacking climate regulations and directing federal dollars to Kentucky. And his intense focus on the federal judiciary — culminating in shifting the Supreme Court to a conservative supermajority — gave the high court the votes needed to curb EPA’s climate authority over power plants and other environmental regulations. Those conservative justices are likely to get the opportunity to decide the fate of the upcoming EPA climate rule.
Neither of the senators running to replace McConnell as the GOP leader — John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota — comes from the Appalachian and Western centers of coal production. No coal is mined in South Dakota, and while Texas is the nation’s biggest coal consumer, its four active mines produce only about 5 percent of the total U.S. output. Both, however, are considered friends of the industry.
And there is no shortage of other pro-coal Republicans.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia is the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee. (She denounced Thursday’s EPA rules, calling them the latest plank in an “unrealistic climate agenda that threatens access to affordable, reliable energy.”) John Barrasso, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s ranking member, is running for whip, and his state of Wyoming is far and away the nation’s biggest coal producer.
Nolan pointed to vocally supportive GOP senators from significant coal states, including Mike Lee of Utah, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Kevin Cramer and John Hoeven of North Dakota, “and even moderates like [Alaska Sen. Lisa] Murkowski.” Those lawmakers, he said, have championed causes such as “grid reliability and the importance of all-the-above energy.”
Coal also has influential Republican supporters in the House.
Former House Appropriations Chair Hal Rogers of Kentucky is still a high-ranking member and used his position to help secure significant funds for mine cleanups and other efforts supporting coal. Rep. James Comer, also of Kentucky, has used his chairmanship of the Oversight Committee to push back against the Biden administration’s environmental agenda.
“I think there’s still a pretty significant constituency for coal in both chambers,” said Neil Chatterjee, a former energy aide to McConnell who chaired the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during the Trump administration. “Coal will still have a voice in Congress.”
But over the past 15 years, that voice has gone from singing on both sides of the aisle to, largely, one.
“If you look at Democrats and you line them up about who’s in favor of coal, I don’t know that you’re going to find anybody,” said Charles McConnell, an Obama-era assistant Energy secretary for fossil fuels.
Manchin always stood out among Democrats. His first Senate election in 2010 famously featured an ad showing him using a rifle to shoot the party’s carbon cap-and-trade bill. As his home state of West Virginia turned deep red and Democrats’ hold on power in the Senate narrowed, Manchin’s influence over energy and climate legislative achievements grew, particularly on the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022.
That sweeping bill had appeared dead because of Manchin’s opposition to new climate spending until the surprise announcement that he had secretly negotiated a deal with Democratic leadership. The IRA included hundreds of billions in clean energy and climate spending. But Manchin used his leverage to ensure the law increased and enhanced the so-called 45Q federal tax credit for carbon storage, which will benefit fossil fuels.
“Manchin was a lone wolf,” said Charles McConnell, who is now executive director of the Center for Carbon Management in Energy at the University of Houston. (He is no relation to the Kentucky senator.)
Some Democrats on the Hill still hail from states with coal interests, but they lack Manchin’s history and connection with the industry and his hyper-focus on the issue.
Pennsylvania and Illinois are the third and fourth biggest producers of coal, and Pennsylvania’s steel industry is a major consumer of coal to make coke, a key component of the metal.
Both are represented by Democrats in the Senate. But those states’ politics are also heavily influenced by their urban centers, which limits the cultural and economic influence coal enjoys in states like West Virginia.
Manchin’s departure is an opportunity for lawmakers from those states, particularly Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman from Pennsylvania, to take up the mantle of advocating on coal-related issues, said Chelsea Barnes, director of government affairs and strategy at the environmental group Appalachian Voices.
More importantly, she argued, it offers the chance to change the tone for Democrats because those lawmakers focus more on mine remediation and promoting union labor than on maintaining coal as a major fuel source.
“In terms of how Democrats work on coal issues, I see Casey and Fetterman certainly caring about it a lot — but with, of course, much bigger focus on the workers themselves rather than the industry as a whole,” Barnes said.
Casey won the backing of the United Mine Workers in his reelection campaign, which is critical to Democrats’ hopes of keeping control of the Senate. He’s pushing legislation that would boost health care for miners suffering from black lung disease.
And last month he decried reports that a 550-worker bituminous coal mine in his state’s southwest corner was planning to close. (The owner, Iron Senergy, said the production pause was triggered by elevated methane levels, and that the shutdown was extended because of the coal export issues created by the bridge disaster that blocked shipments from the Baltimore port.)
“Pennsylvania’s coal miners have powered our nation for generations, risking their lives and their long-term health to power our factories and heat our homes,” Casey said in a statement. “We owe it to them to provide them with the health care and compensation they deserve for putting their lives on the line year after year in the coal mines.”
Fetterman lacks the voting record of Manchin and Casey. But last fall he joined other Democrats in a letter urging EPA to adopt “strong” climate rules for the power sector, and a spokesman said that “John will always be in the corner of coal workers and communities, not the coal lobby.”
But neither Casey nor any remaining Democrat is fighting the same pro-coal battles as vigorously as Manchin.
While Casey raised initial qualms about impacts of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan on Pennsylvania, he ultimately backed the rule. Manchin, meanwhile, joined Republicans to vote to kill it. The two split again in 2019, when Casey voted for and Manchin voted against a resolution targeting the Trump EPA’s light-touch climate rule for power plants.
Even among Republicans, a shift has occurred in how they talk about coal.
What used to be a cultural and economic argument has been undercut as natural gas and renewables out-compete coal in the power markets. That exacerbated a decadeslong downward trend in coal mining employment due to industry automation.
“If you’re sitting in Washington trying to support the coal industry by running unabated coal plants and making the case for the way of life and jobs and all that kind of stuff — you know, I have a bit of sympathy for that, but not much,” said the University of Houston’s McConnell. “That’s just dinosaurs trying to hang on to the past. And I frankly don’t see that as thought leadership in any way.”
These days, the banner argument for coal isn’t cost — it’s grid reliability.
Wind and solar generate electricity intermittently when the sun shines or wind blows. So as those renewable sources are expected to outpace coal’s electricity production for the first time this year and some regions facing natural gas supply shortages, much of the political conversation around coal has turned to the need to keep the lights on.
Michelle Bloodworth, president and CEO of the coal industry group America’s Power, said the conversation has changed just in the seven years she has been at the helm.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re Republican or Democrat, but obviously nobody wants the lights to go out,” she said.
Bloodworth pointed to warnings from nonpartisan grid experts, such as the North American Electric Reliability Corp., which said in its recent long-term forecast that the U.S. could see power shortages in the coming years from rapidly retiring fossil fuel plants. FERC has also raised questions about grid reliability, as have some grid operators.
“Every day, there’s another story about the concerns about potential shortages in the electricity markets,” said the National Mining Association’s Nolan. “And that’s good news for coal.”