Lights on top of West Virginia’s Capitol dome were turned off this week in memory of Sen. Robert C. Byrd. (AP Photo/Jeff Gentner)
“Our lord we thank you for our senator who has left a tremendous legacy so that our mountains will continue to feel the gentle steps of those who love them, that his legacy will be our rolling hills and they will continue to hear the sound of mountain music.” — Brad Reed, W.Va. Army Guard Chaplain
That was part of the prayer offered last evening at the brief ceremony when Sen. Robert C. Byrd’s funeral procession reached the south steps of the state Capitol here in Charleston.
There’s been so much written and said about Sen. Byrd in the last week that perhaps it’s pointless to try to write or say much more. But while the words of that prayer could be read many ways (watch the whole thing on C-Span), they certainly got me thinking about the important unfinished business political leaders in West Virginia’s coalfields have before them in the wake of Sen. Byrd’s passing.
– First, Congress is still going around and around on a climate change/energy bill, and it’s hard to know exactly what direction that discussion is going. But what role will West Virginia’s remaining political leaders play? Will they, to paraphrase Sen. Byrd, “stick their heads in the sand” and continue to dispute the science and ignore the need to make meaningful reductions in coal’s greenhouse gas emissions?
The state’s best hope in this regard is probably Sen. Jay Rockefeller, whose role as chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation puts him in a key role in the debate. While he’s insisted he doesn’t argue the science, Sen. Rockefeller has voted otherwise, and his public statements have indicated he’s very intent on not doing anything that someone like Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship might be able to attack as “anti-coal.”
Sen. Rockefeller was among those who attended a key White House meeting earlier this week about the energy and climate change issue, and this is what his office put out to describe his participation:
Senator Rockefeller did attend the White House meeting, which is part of the ongoing discussion about the future of energy legislation. Senator Rockefeller made clear to the President – as he has before – that, for him, energy discussions start and stop with the economy and jobs and he will not support any bill that hurts West Virginia families. He appreciates the ongoing dialogue with the White House and with his colleagues on both sides of this aisle on this important issue and believes these discussions will and should continue.
People file past the casket with Sen. Robert C. Byrd Thursday, July 1, 2010 Charleston, W.Va. (AP Photo/Jeff Gentner)
– Next, there’s mountaintop removal … Gov. Joe Manchin’s Department of Environmental Protection has already hired outside lawyers in preparation for an expected lawsuit against the Obama administration’s efforts to curb the water quality damage done by large-scale surface mining across the region.
At the same time, environmental groups haven’t exactly indicated a willingness to negotiate or compromise, given their very harsh criticism of EPA’s decision to approve a Logan County mountaintop removal permit where the impacts have already been greatly reduced.
Sen. Byrd was certainly right when he said we have our work cut out for us “in finding a prudent and profitable middle ground.“ It’s worth remember that Sen. Byrd’s recent comments on the coal industry were far from positioning himself for a ban on the practice, as most environmental groups advocate:
Let’s speak a little more truth here. No deliberate effort to do away with the coal industry could ever succeed in Washington because there is no available alternative energy supply that could immediately supplant the use of coal for base load power generation in America. That is a stubborn fact that vexes some in the environmental community, but it is reality.
– Then, there’s coal-mine safety … judging from recent events, the aftermath of the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster is turning increasingly into a battle between Massey Energy — with its PR firms and attorneys — and MSHA, led by the former safety director of Massey’s longtime enemy, the United Mine Workers of America union.
While there’s little question that there is much to criticize about Massey’s safety practices, it’s also clear that MSHA has much to answer for — but as best I’ve been able to tell, Sen. Byrd was the only one on the Democratic side of the aisle in Congress who seemed interested in exploring potential failings by Obama administration regulators.
Who now will ask Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and and MSHA chief Joe Main why they didn’t ask for more money to properly enforce the agency’s Pattern of Violations program?
– There’s the question of what West Virginia — and the rest of the Appalachian coalfields — will do when the coal is gone, or even when production almost inevitably plummets in the coming years … How will state and local governments pay for vital services? What will our communities do to provide jobs and put food on the table in the greener, carbon-constrained future that our planet must embrace?
In voting against the Murkowski resolution — in one of his last votes in the U.S. Senate, Sen. Byrd reminded us:
It is a simple fact that the costs of producing and consuming Central Appalachian coal continue to rise rapidly. Older coal-fired powerplants are being closed down, and they appear unlikely to be replaced by new coal plants unless we very soon adopt several major changes in federal energy policy. In 2009, American power companies generated less of their electricity from coal than they have at any other time in recent memory. In the last month alone, two major power companies have reportedly announced that they will idle or permanently close over a dozen coal-fired powerplant units that have consumed millions of tons of West Virginia coal in recent years.
– Finally, and almost certainly most importantly, there’s the basic issue of how we discuss these very issues — this unfinished business — among our fellow West Virginians. Sen. Byrd encouraged all of us, and especially his fellow elected officials, to avoid the sharp rhetoric, divisive attacks and near-violent confrontations, and instead urged an open, honest discussion:
Change has been a constant throughout the history of our coal industry. West Virginians can choose to anticipate change and adapt to it, or resist and be overrun by it. One thing is clear. The time has arrived for the people of the Mountain State to think long and hard about which course they want to choose.
In the second of his two major commentaries on coal, Sen. Byrd closed with this thought:
The old chestnut that “coal is West Virginia’s greatest natural resource” deserves revision. I believe that our people are West Virginia’s most valuable resource. We must demand to be treated as such.
President Obama, in his remarks today at Sen. Byrd’s memorial service, reminded us of the senator’s hopes for all of us, for his fellow West Virginians, and of his belief that we could all grow, and learn and be better as human beings and as citizens of our wonderful state:
As I reflect on the full sweep of 92 years, it seems to me that his life bent toward justice. Robert Byrd possessed that quintessential American quality. That is a capacity to change, a capacity to learn. A capacity to listen, to be made more perfect.
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President Obama got it right. Senator Byrd changed and grew, and for the better, and that was possibly his most notable achievement.
My wife was in his office with our one-year-old daughter in the early 1970s, when Senator Byrd “reamed out” her group of ministers and lay church people for “undermining” our troops in Vietnam — some people were crying under his righteous chastisement. What a long way he travelled since then!
I remember when he said “I believe Anita Hill” at Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings. That was a good moment.
Close to death, on many issues related to coal, he left us with words, well summarized by Ken Ward, that point to the path West Virginia needs to take in the future. Let’s take heed!
I don’t know if the blog is accepting comments while Ken’s on vacation, but I’ll give it a whirl. Following are excerpts from a recent post at Joe Romm’s Climate Proress blog, quoting from a NY Times article, found at http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/07/09/09climatewire-utilities-face-the-decision-point-of-big-shi-27535.html.
This is information that people in the coalfields should know about. This is also the kind of information that led Senator Byrd to make some remarkable pronouncements, that Ken has summarized above.
Utilities are Shifting to Gas, Renewables and Efficiency
With or without a climate bill, electric utilities are shifting their investments to efficiency measures that cut long-term costs and integrate more natural gas and renewable energy into their power supplies, according to a new report. “The business landscape for electric utilities is shifting quickly,” says a report authored by Navigant Consulting for Ceres, a Boston-based coalition of institutional investors and environmental groups. “In turn, the traditional operating paradigm of building large generation facilities to sell ever-increasing amounts of electricity is changing.”
The report says drivers of this shifting paradigm include the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 80 percent by 2050 and policies in many states making it costly to build more fossil fuel-based electric generation. The report says costs for renewable energy are coming down significantly, and regulatory policies now allow utilities to count large-scale energy efficiency as the lowest-cost energy resource. Further, utilities are adopting “smart grid” technology to help manage electricity use, and there is more interest in developing plug-in electric vehicles….
“Recent technological breakthroughs in extracting natural gas from shale and other ‘tight’ formations have led to a startling reassessment of the nation’s natural gas supplies, previously thought to be dwindling,” says the report. “Natural gas is positioned to play a growing role as a complement to variable renewable energy resources. In addition, natural gas can help optimize overall energy efficiency by integrating thermal and electric technologies and end-uses.”Coal, according to this report, faces an array of challenges. Most U.S. coal-fired power plants are at least 30 years old. New U.S. EPA regulations to cut emissions of haze and ozone-causing nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, mercury and other pollutants are expected to push many of those old plants into retirement. Citing a March 2010 study by Bernstein Research, the report says the EPA regulations will likely force the retirement of about one-quarter of U.S. coal-burning generation by 2015.
The report also counts that 120 coal-fired power plant projects were canceled over the last decade because of environmental and financing issues. Another 50 plants face lawsuits from parties attempting to halt their construction or operation. There also is mounting evidence that coal as a commodity will become more expensive, according to Navigant and Ceres. They note that a 2008 U.S. Geological Survey study of the Powder River Basin coal fields in Wyoming found that the economically recoverable reserves might be only 6 percent of previous estimates, “raising questions about the long-term price and availability of coal in other areas of the U.S.”
Tom King, president of National Grid USA, a major gas distributor and electric utility in New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, said coal will always be a part of the fuel mix in certain regions because of its abundance. But in an interview with ClimateWire, he emphasized that the priorities of electric utilities are changing. “Natural gas for the foreseeable future remains a reliable source,” he said. “The policy ought to be that we extract the gas.”
King’s support for using gas for power generation is notable. For years, industrial users of gas and local distribution companies such as National Grid discouraged talk about using more gas for electricity generation. The concern was that it would increase competition for natural gas and drive up the commodity price. Now, as King noted, there is broad awareness that expanding U.S. shale gas fields have dramatically increased the gas supply. One of the hottest gas basins, the Marcellus Shale, sits in his backyard in the Northeast….
An analyst at the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie told delegates at the 2010 Energy Epicenter conference in Denver that U.S. natural gas prices will increase to a range of $6.50 to $7 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) as cost pressures intensify in the next five years. That’s around the place that many gas drillers say is needed to sustain production. Natural gas has hovered around $4/MMBtu for more than a year.
Those costs include competition for rigs, the cost of major oil services companies working with gas companies to produce shale gas, and a higher-cost economy. “The core, low-cost unconventional gas plays — Marcellus, Haynesville and Barnett — will continue to grow, but within a few years, as the pace of demand growth accelerates, more expensive shale and tight gas supplies will be required,” said Jen Snyder, the principal natural gas analyst for Wood Mackenzie. “Economywide inflationary pressures mean that, in nominal terms, prices could reach $8.50/MMBtu.”
She added that even in the absence of climate legislation that increases the cost of coal-fired generation, EPA and state regulations could lead to 45 gigawatts of coal-fired power generation being retired by 2020. That would stimulate about 5 billion cubic feet a day of gas demand.
Food for thought!
Looks to me like West Virginia political leaders might take a lesson from our State’s history thus far, and begin to act now to secure more revenues from natural gas extraction — as well as from coal mining — to fund the high-quality education of our State’s children — which is the proven, single most effective strategy for reducing poverty and improving economic opportunity.
What do people think?