Category: Fossil_Coal_CN Politics_CN VIRGINIA_CN

West Virginia regulators accuse American Electric Power of driving up costs with skimpy use of its coal plants. Others say the high costs of those aging plants are a growing burden to citizens in one of the nation's poorest states.

EPA coal ash regulations issued in 2015 allow polluting utilities to self-regulate. And a giant loophole exempts coal ash piles that stopped receiving coal plant waste before that year.

Over the last decade, the coal industry collapsed, leaving the largest producers bankrupt. This, however, turned out to be an opportunity. Coal companies are legally mandated to restore the torn-up land and polluted creeks left behind when mining is done. But the biggest companies shifted the cleanup to others. An investigation by Bloomberg News and NPR shows that many old coal mines have new owners that are not completing the work, so the pollution and damage that used to be the industry’s problem may become the public’s. Joining us now are Josh Saul and Zach Mider of Bloomberg and NPR’s Dave Mistich.

Coal prices are soaring as the global energy crisis forces power providers worldwide to boost usage of the carbon-laden mineral.
Why it matters: A renewed embrace of coal represents a turnabout from the previous global focus on cutting emissions.

Driving the news: Coal prices around the world have reached new highs in recent weeks.
Europe’s benchmark coal futures price is up roughly 90% from last year to over $320 per metric ton.

Hawaii shuttered its last remaining coal-fired power station on Thursday, a major milestone in the state’s ambitious effort to transition to 100 percent renewable energy by 2045.
The station, the AES Hawaii Power Plant near Kalaeloa, in southwest Oahu, provided more than 11 percent of the state’s electricity in 2021, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is the most significant climate legislation in United States history. Energy Innovation Policy and Technology LLC® modeling finds the IRA’s $370 billion in climate and clean energy investments could cut U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions up to 43% below 2005 levels by 2030.

A federal judge late yesterday struck down two U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) resource management plans that failed to address the public health consequences of allowing massive amounts of coal, oil, and gas production from public lands and minerals in the Powder River Basin, including approximately 6 billion tons of low-grade, highly polluting coal over 20 years.
The Biden administration had defended the Trump-era resource management plans (RMPs) in the court proceedings. The court ordered the BLM to redo its analysis a second time.

It’s the end of a dirty era in Hawaii. The state’s last-ever coal shipment arrived in Oahu on Wednesday, bound for the last remaining coal-fired power plant, which is due to shut down in September.

State regulators unanimously approved Georgia Power’s 2022 Integrated Resources Plan, or IRP, on Thursday, which includes retiring all of its coal plants by 2028, with the exception of two units from Plant Bowen totaling nearly 1,600 MW.

The sites, once a source of greenhouse gases, have a useful feature: They’re wired to the electricity grid. For new ventures like solar farms, that can save a lot of time and money.