February 16, 2010

Long Live Coal? Part 1
by Allison Adams

Coal fuels more than 90 percent of electricity in five states. West Virginia leads the pack with 98 percent, followed by Indiana, Wyoming, North Dakota and Utah. Twenty states employ coal for at least 60 percent of their power, and a total of 26 use coal for more than 50 percent of generation. Considering those facts, it is easy to see why energy legislation has been as sluggish as the economy.

In Kentucky, where E.ON, the world’s largest investor-owned energy provider has gained a toehold in the U.S., coal has fueled the economy for more than a century. Until 1988, it was the nation’s leading coal-producing state. It now ranks third, after Wyoming and West Virginia. Some 130 million tons are extracted from the state’s coalfields each year, and the mining and utility industries provide tens of thousands of jobs. But as coal’s environmental reputation is increasingly blackened, pressure is mounting on the state to reduce its carbon footprint. Coal-driven power plants produce 40 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions. Kentucky ranks 13th nationally in per capita carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, and seventh in consumption of coal.

Will coal remain king, or will the state turn to energy efficiency and alternative energy to fuel its future?

Kentucky’s government, for one, is looking increasingly to energy efficiency. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Kentucky’s per capita consumption of residential electricity is among the highest in the nation. In February 2010, the state’s Finance and Administration Secretary Jonathan Miller announced that money over the next two years would go into making thousands of low- and moderate-income homes in the state more energy efficient. And as the state explores diversification of power sources, community colleges are beginning to re-train Kentucky’s workforce—from mining and utility workers to construction labor—for the new “green collar” economy.

“We definitely think Kentucky can live on burning a lot less coal,” says Wallace McMullen, the energy chair of the Cumberland Chapter of the Sierra Club. But, he adds, “The coal industry has an awful lot of political influence in the state right now. It doesn’t seem like that’s going to change real fast.”

There’s good reason for McMullen’s pessimism. Renewable and Efficiency Portfolio Standards have been passed by 28 states, including Kentucky’s neighbors, Illinois, Missouri, Ohio and West Virginia. But reformist energy legislation in Kentucky has failed. This year’s House Bill 408, introduced on Feb. 9 by Rep. Harry Moberly (D-Madison County), would establish a Renewable and Efficiency Portfolio Standard requiring Kentucky utilities to generate at least 12.5% of retail electricity from renewable energy by 2020, with at least 2% from solar. It would also require an energy efficiency rate of 2 percent over the sales of two years prior. In addition, it encourages Kentucky to diversity its energy mix by establishing production-based incentives to attract private investment in renewable energy.