Coal: Dangerous Power

Geol­o­gy and Mar­kets, not EPA, Wag­ing War on Coal — Clean Ener­gy Action shows that it’s the peak­ing of coal pro­duc­tion, not Oba­ma poli­cies, caus­ing coal’s decline by dri­ving up the cost of extract­ing coal (June 2014)

Warn­ing: Faulty Report­ing on U.S. Coal Reserves — 2013 Clean Ener­gy Action report on peak­ing of coal reserves

For decades, the Unit­ed States has relied heav­i­ly on coal to meet its elec­tric­i­ty demand. Coal accounts for approx­i­mate­ly half of all US pow­er gen­er­a­tion. It is mined in 26 US states, burned in all but two (Ver­mont and Rhode Island), and its waste (ash) is dis­posed of in more than 600 dumps in at least 47 states. All told, there are upwards of 600 exist­ing coal plants in the Unit­ed States and thou­sands around the world.

Coal’s place in the America’s ener­gy future is under attack and more pre­car­i­ous than ever.

The indus­try is under attack as it threat­ens our health, strains our econ­o­my, and is rec­og­nized as a dri­ving force behind cli­mate change and eco­log­i­cal destruction.

Health Impacts of Coal

Coal presents a seri­ous threat to the safe­ty of a com­mu­ni­ty; threat­en­ing both water bod­ies (includ­ing drink­ing water) and air quality.

Health Impacts & Coal Min­ing: There are sev­er­al types of coal min­ing and they are all unsafe for work­ers and com­mu­ni­ties. Under­ground mine work­ers often suf­fer from ‘black lung’ or pneu­mo­co­nio­sis. Work­ers get black lung dis­ease from breath­ing in coal dust– it results in short­ness of breath, and puts indi­vid­u­als at risk for emphy­se­ma, bron­chi­tis, and fibro­sis. Sur­pris­ing­ly, black lung is now on the rise among coal min­ers. The Nation­al Insti­tute for Occu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health (NIOSH) report­ed that in 2005–2006, 9 per­cent of min­ers with 25 or more years of min­ing expe­ri­ence test­ed pos­i­tive for black lung. That is in con­trast to only 4 per­cent in the late 1990s. Black lung is incur­able, increas­ing in sever­i­ty, and is now hit­ting younger min­ers as well as more expe­ri­enced miners. 

Beyond pos­ing threats to work­ers’ safe­ty, pol­lu­tion from coal-min­ing is linked to chron­ic ill­ness among res­i­dents in coal min­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Data col­lect­ed in a 2008 study by the WVU Insti­tute for Health Pol­i­cy Research shows that peo­ple liv­ing in coal min­ing communities:

• Have a 70 per­cent increased risk for devel­op­ing kid­ney disease.
• Have a 64 per­cent increased risk for devel­op­ing chron­ic obstruc­tive pul­monary dis­ease (COPD) such as emphysema.
• Are 30 per­cent more like­ly to report high blood pres­sure (hyper­ten­sion).

The same study con­clud­ed that mor­tal­i­ty rates are high­er in coal-min­ing com­mu­ni­ties than in oth­er areas of the coun­try or region and that there are 313 deaths in West Vir­ginia from coal-min­ing pol­lu­tion every year. The study account­ed for restrict­ed access to health­care, high­er than aver­age smok­ing rates, and low­er than aver­age income levels.

Moun­tain­top removal (MTR) min­ing, the min­ing prac­tice of remov­ing the tops of moun­tains to access (often) small seams of coal hun­dreds of feet below the sur­face, often con­t­a­m­i­nates water bod­ies. When moun­tains in Appalachia are lit­er­al­ly blast­ed apart with ammo­ni­um nitrate (ANFO), the “over­bur­den” rocks, soil, and debris above the coal seam, are pushed into val­leys, bury­ing, and often con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing streams and oth­er water bod­ies. Rock pre­vi­ous­ly deep under­ground nat­u­ral­ly con­tains tox­ic met­als; when exposed and then dumped into water bod­ies, these met­als can seep into streams, kill aquat­ic life, and con­t­a­m­i­nate drink­ing water sources.

Movies such as Coal Coun­try illus­trate vis­i­bly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed tap water in Appalachia com­mu­ni­ties such as Rawl, WV.

Health Impacts & Coal Plants: There’s no short­age of data to show that indi­vid­u­als liv­ing near a coal plant are at high­er risk for health prob­lems than those who do not live near a plant.  In Delaware, years after res­i­dents request­ed a study, the Delaware Divi­sion of Pub­lic Health con­firmed a can­cer clus­ter in the six zip­code area sur­round­ing NRG Ener­gy Inc.’s Indi­an Riv­er coal plant. The study showed a can­cer rate 17 per­cent high­er than the nation­al average.

In Chica­go, where two aging coal plants sit in the major­i­ty-Lati­no neigh­bor­hood of Lit­tle Vil­lage, res­i­dents have report­ed res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems for years. The Fisk and Craw­ford plants in Chica­go have not upgrad­ed their pol­lu­tion con­trol equip­ment, and instead have been exempt­ed from fed­er­al pol­lu­tion con­trol stan­dards under the Clean Air Act. Now the Clean Air Task Force attrib­ut­es close to 350 deaths annu­al­ly to the two out­dat­ed plants.

And near Longview Texas, the Mar­tin Lake coal plant is respon­si­ble for 13 per­cent of all indus­tri­al air pol­lu­tion in the state, con­tribut­ing to Dal­las-Fort Worth’s high ozone lev­els and non-attain­ment status.

Sim­i­lar health prob­lems plague every com­mu­ni­ty down­wind of a smoke­stack. Giv­en that coal plants con­tribute 67 per­cent of sul­fur diox­ide (SO2), 23 per­cent of nitro­gen oxides (NOx), and 34 per­cent of all mer­cury emis­sions in the nation, it is not sur­pris­ing to notice increased rates of asth­ma, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, and pre-mature and low birth-weight births in these com­mu­ni­ties. Emis­sions tests at coal plants have revealed 67 dif­fer­ent air tox­i­cs. Fifty five of these tox­i­cs are neu­ro­tox­ins or devel­op­men­tal tox­ins. Twen­ty-four are known, prob­a­ble, or pos­si­ble car­cino­gens. The Clean Air Task Force’s updat­ed “The Toll From Coal report (2010) esti­mates that par­tic­u­late pol­lu­tion from exist­ing coal plants would cause 13,200 deaths in 2010. The analy­sis found that the fleet of coal plants would also emit pol­lu­tion result­ing in more than 20,000 heart attacks, 9,700 hos­pi­tal­iza­tions, and more than 200,000 asth­ma attacks.

These coal-plant relat­ed health risks are unequal­ly dis­trib­uted across the pop­u­la­tion. In the Unit­ed States, coal’s health risks affect African Amer­i­cans more severe­ly than whites, large­ly because a large por­tion of African Amer­i­cans live close to coal plants and coal waste dumps. Six­ty-eight per­cent of African Amer­i­cans live with­in 30 miles of a coal plant, as opposed to 56 per­cent of whites and though African Amer­i­cans com­prise 13 per­cent of the (US) pop­u­la­tion, they account for 17 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion liv­ing with­in 5 miles of a pow­er plant waste sites. Asth­ma attacks trig­gered by expo­sure to above-aver­age pol­lu­tion lev­els send African Amer­i­cans to the emer­gency room at three times the rate of whites. Hos­pi­tal­iza­tions and deaths from asth­ma are also high­er among African Amer­i­cans, like­ly exac­er­bat­ed by restrict­ed access to health­care that could offer indi­vid­u­als pre­ven­ta­tive care. Chil­dren, the elder­ly, those with res­pi­ra­to­ry disease(s), and meat eaters (par­tic­u­lar­ly seafood) are most vul­ner­a­ble to the health risks coal burn­ing poses.

Check out our page on Coal Ash for infor­ma­tion on the health impacts of these tox­ic dump sites.

The Economics of Coal

Propped up by sub­si­dies and cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions, coal may not be viable for long. An eco­nom­ic analy­sis of the indus­try is reveal­ing that coal is not cost com­pet­i­tive in the long-term, and may not even be right now. The coal sec­tor also doesn’t pro­vide the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits, such as jobs, that the indus­try claims.

Coal has been boom­ing in Appalachia for decades, yet it is one of the poor­est areas in the coun­try.  Shouldn’t all of that coal-min­ing activ­i­ty have made the res­i­dents and min­ers rich? One recent study com­pared pover­ty rates in WV coal-min­ing coun­ties to pover­ty in WV coun­ties with­out min­ing. The data showed that coal-min­ing com­mu­ni­ties were more impov­er­ished than coun­ties out­side the coal­fields, and the trend appears to be get­ting more pro­nounced.  And though min­ing pro­duc­tion has increased in West Vir­ginia, min­ing jobs dropped near­ly 30 per­cent (Source: Sier­ra Club Coal Report). The increase in sur­face min­ing (eg. moun­tain­top removal) that pro­vides few­er jobs than under­ground min­ing, accounts for much of this disparity.

In Octo­ber 2010, the US Ener­gy and Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion pro­vid­ed more data on jobs in the coal sec­tor.  It’s use­ful to take a look at the num­bers to under­stand how mis­lead­ing the “coal pro­vides good jobs” myth is. The coal indus­try is a pro at giv­ing peo­ple all over the coun­try the impres­sion that coal-min­ing jobs are union­ized, or at least most­ly union­ized. Yet only 22% of coal min­ing jobs are union jobs and the num­ber of jobs min­ing pro­vides is falling as coal mines close. All told, there are 86,432 coal min­ing jobs. To put the num­ber in per­spec­tive, there are more than eighty times as many peo­ple in prison, on parole, or pro­ba­tion in the Unit­ed States as employed in coal mines. There are at least 40x as many truck­ers as min­ers, and well over 150x as many unem­ployed Amer­i­cans as coal min­ers. Cer­tain­ly these jobs are impor­tant, (espe­cial­ly to those whose pay­checks comes from min­ing), but coal jobs do NOT sup­port a core pil­lar of our econ­o­my.  Coal mines employ only a tiny frac­tion, far below 1% of the US pop­u­la­tion, and these jobs are replace­able. (EIA) Per invest­ment dol­lar, invest­ments in wind and solar pow­er would cre­ate at least 2.8x the num­ber of jobs as coal; invest­ments in con­ser­va­tion would cre­ate 3.8x as many jobs, and invest­ments in mass tran­sit would cre­ate 6x as many jobs as coal!

Peak Coal — Another economic factor

Invest­ments in fos­sil fuels dri­ve up fuel prices as eco­nom­i­cal­ly recov­er­able fuels become scarcer, while invest­ments in renew­able ener­gy make alter­na­tive fuels more afford­able as tech­nolo­gies improve and ener­gy mar­kets grow. Already, most eco­nom­i­cal­ly extractable US coal has been burned. U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (EIA) infor­ma­tion on coal “reserves” does not take into account eco­nom­ic recov­er­abil­i­ty. Yet like every finite resource, at some point coal sup­plies will ‘peak’, mean­ing that as recov­er­able sup­plies dwin­dle the ener­gy-return-on-invest­ment (EROI) will be low­er than can jus­ti­fy min­ing, pro­cess­ing, and trans­port­ing the coal. When this peak will occur is one of the fac­tors that set the price of coal, and in turn deter­mine the cost com­pet­i­tive­ness of oth­er ener­gy tech­nolo­gies.  The avail­abil­i­ty of coal is impor­tant to under­stand before mak­ing invest­ments in coal tech­nolo­gies such as inte­grat­ed gas com­bined cycle (IGCC), car­bon cap­ture and stor­age (CCS), and coal-to-liq­uids (CTL). Build­ing a new wave of cap­i­tal-inten­sive coal plants with the poten­tial to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty for 50+ years is a bad invest­ment if coal peaks before the plant’s use­ful lifes­pan is lived out. Despite indus­try dub­bing the Unit­ed States the ‘Sau­di Ara­bia of coal’ and describ­ing a 200-year sup­ply, a recent USGS study sug­gests that there may be only 20–30 years of eco­nom­i­cal­ly recov­er­able coal left in the Unit­ed States.

The report Coal: Resources and Future Pro­duc­tion (2007) con­cludes that sta­tis­tics on glob­al coal sup­plies are flawed since they are based on poor data sets. For instance, sev­er­al coun­tries (eg. Viet­nam) have not updat­ed ‘proven reserves’ for 40 years. Oth­er coun­tries have dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduced their coal sup­plies.  Peak coal is just one of many rea­sons to tran­si­tion from the high­ly pol­lut­ing ener­gy source.

While the costs add up they aren’t as easy to cal­cu­late as com­pa­ny prof­its. Luck­i­ly, the “Min­ing Coal, Mount­ing Costs: The Life­cy­cle Con­se­quences of Coal” report pro­duced by the Cen­ter for Health and the Glob­al Envi­ron­ment (2011) keeps tabs on many of these exter­nal­ized costs. Their best esti­mate for the “eco­nom­i­cal­ly-quan­tifi­able costs of coal” in 2008 totaled more than 345 billion.

Coal production and use destroys a sustainable future.

As moun­tains are lev­eled and water bod­ies con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, the coal­fields become unliv­able; a sus­tain­able future is destroyed. Prop­er­ty val­ues plum­met when there is not potable drink­ing water or when the prop­er­ty is prone to flood­ing (from clearcut­ting).  Tourism oppor­tu­ni­ties dry up, entre­pre­neurs go else, and peo­ple move away. Coal mining’s destruc­tion is dri­ving peo­ple away from their fam­i­lies and land in Appalachia. Appalachia can reduce pover­ty and diver­si­fy and restore its econ­o­my if min­ing is halt­ed imme­di­ate­ly.  An end to min­ing would enable Appalachi­ans to use the beau­ti­ful and bio-diverse moun­tains for local­ly-grown foods, a sus­tain­able tim­ber indus­try, and hand-craft­ed goods, among oth­er life-sus­tain­ing eco­nom­ic ventures.

Coal Drives Climate Change and Ecological Destruction

In a des­per­ate attempt to con­vince Amer­i­cans that coal can be a clean, safe fuel source mined and burned long into the future, the coal indus­try spends mil­lions every year deny­ing cli­mate change and per­pet­u­at­ing myths of “Clean Coal”.  Noth­ing could be far­ther from the truth.

Coal-fired pow­er plants emit a third of the Unit­ed States’ glob­al warm­ing pol­lu­tion; coal min­ing releas­es methane (a potent green­house gas), car­bon monox­ide, and car­bon diox­ide; and trans­port­ing it adds anoth­er 600,000 tons of nitro­gen oxide to the environment. 

Fur­ther­more, moun­tain­top removal min­ing com­pa­nies blowup and bull­doze our country’s most bio­di­verse moun­tains and forests. Instead of pro­tect­ing this car­bon sink, coal com­pa­nies clearcut the forests and destroy his­toric sites (includ­ing fam­i­ly ceme­ter­ies). The EPA has esti­mat­ed that MTR has already cleared more than a mil­lion acres of forests and moun­tains. In 2005 a Pro­gram­mat­ic Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment on MTR stat­ed that moun­tain­top removal oper­a­tions have buried and con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed more than 1,200 miles of streams.

Films such as Low Coal cap­ture the intense per­son­al con­nec­tions and his­to­ries many Appalachi­ans share with the land in the coal­fields. The sto­ries offer tes­ti­mo­ny on why moun­tain­top removal must stop immediately.

All forms of coal – ‘clean’ (IGCC), car­bon cap­ture and stor­age, and liq­ue­fied – cre­ate envi­ron­men­tal disasters. 

“Clean coal” is a myth. It’s goal is to reduce air emis­sions, which is good and need­ed. How­ev­er, that should not lull one into think­ing that coal min­ing would be any less destruc­tive. Indeed, mine sites employ­ing coal wash­ing treat­ments could make the slur­ry lagoons even more tox­ic as con­t­a­m­i­nants are removed from the coal. Such con­t­a­m­i­nants as radi­a­tion, mer­cury and flu­o­ride don’t go away, they just go some­where else.

See our pages on car­bon cap­ture and stor­age and so-called “clean coal” for more information.

Coal Calculus — By the Numbers

sta­tis­tics are linked to sources/citations in above text

600+	US coal plants
600+	US coal ash dump sites
67	Air tox­ins from coal
13,200	Coal deaths (2010)
200,000	Coal-trig­gered asth­ma attacks (2010)
19,015	Union min­ing jobs (22% of all min­ing jobs)
20–30	Years of recov­er­able coal
$345 Bil­lion	Annu­al cost of coal
0	Coal plants built since 2008
100+	Coal plants defeat­ed by activists