Recently in Coal Category

The gold business card -- that's gold, not gold-colored paper -- said it all about where the money is coming from for a new kind of gasification industry. The small but growing area is a fairly low-emission process that turns carbon feedstocks, mainly coal, into synthetic gas for multiple uses -- including turning power turbines -- without burning them. It is especially expected to take off in China, with that country's abundance of cash, coal and carbon dioxide emissions.

The card came out of the wallet of gasification entrepreneur Robert Walker, who said it came from a Chinese business contact.

Sometimes disasters lead to much sound and fury from policymakers, and not much else. The terrible mine collapse at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine in April generated a lot of noise, regulatory pushes, and some efforts at federal safety-crackdown laws. But one small, unglamorous effort has already resulted in something: transparency.

There's a lot to be said for transparency.

Last week's 33rd anniversary of the Surface Mining Reclamation and Control Act, also known as SMCRA, marked an important milestone in the development of the Powder River Basin coal fields, as does November's upcoming 20th anniversary of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, which mandated reductions in sulfur emissions.

More often overlooked in the development of the region, which now annually accounts for about 40% of US coal production, is the construction of the so-called Joint Line, a 100-mile stretch of railroad in northeastern Wyoming used by Union Pacific and BNSF Railway that serves the six largest coal mines in the country.

Coal and coal-utility executives speaking at Platts' Coal Properties and Investment Conference in Fort Lauderdale this week met in a besieged mood, but seemed to have a pretty clear idea of the reason and purpose behind it.

"There is a campaign to eliminate coal at all levels. And unfortunately that campaign is in charge of EPA, the White House and runs the Department of Energy." That was Seth Schwartz, managing director of Energy Ventures Analysis, an Arlington, Virginia-based consulting firm. He and others see little but a concerted drive to drive them out of business.

The state of Illinois is pulling out the stops to make the FutureGen clean coal plant happen. Our correspondent Bob Matyi reports that governor Pat Quinn now wants to bypass the General Assembly and commit the state to buying the entire 275-MW output from the plant.

After the state rallied hugely to have Washington choose Mattoon, Illinois, for the carbon-capture project instead of a Texas site, Illinois is not giving up. Within the last couple of weeks the state has succeeded in getting Illinois-based companies to back FutureGen, which has foundered for months after big private sponsors dropped out. Without more participation in it, the federal government (which is supposed to make a decision very soon) just won't give it the $1.1 billion that has been more or less earmarked for the $2 billion project.

Dozens of environmental organizations took out an eye-catching full-page ad in the Washington Post Tuesday aimed at Lisa Jackson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. On the one-year anniversary of the devastating Kingston power plant ash spill, the groups said: "It is time for the coal industry to clean up its act."

The groups are hyper-aware that EPA is walking a precarious path. It has been negotiating with the Office of Management and Budget about proposed coal ash regulation. EPA/OMB have been meeting this fall with lots of industry groups that want badly to avoid hazardous-waste designation, and EPA said last week it was delaying its decision from the promised end-of-year to sometime soon after.

Robert Byrd has been in the US Senate longer than anyone has ever been. For all that time he has been a champion of West Virginia's coal industry, and he isn't really changing his basic stripes. But he is telling his state's people to get with the program with respect to Environmental Protection Agency and congressional issues.

"To deny the mounting science of climate change is to stick our heads in the sand and say 'deal me out,'" he said in a long op-ed piece intended for publication in state newspapers. In it he spoke of climate change and other issues, including mountaintop removal mining, which has created a lot of battles in the state.

All in all, his piece is an exceptional mouthful. It doesn't mean Byrd is now an anti-coal, CFL-bulb-loving environmentalist. There is interest-balancing to be done in West Virginia, as indicated by careful remarks in response to Byrd's piece. But it's interesting how sometimes people nearing the end of their terms, with little or nothing left to lose, see things a bit differently. Recall that Virginia Republican John Warner co-sponsored a climate change bill during his last years in the Senate.

In the debate over how shale gas drilling should be regulated, Albert Appleton, an infrastructure and environmental consultant, says one aspect of the issue is being overlooked: Who will pay the environmental costs?

"Over the next 10 years, it will become ever more apparent that the existing hydrocarbon-based energy industry will be playing a game of last-man-standing in which the prize will go to the industry or the components of particular industries that are more efficient and more sustainable," he said in testimony offered on June 4 to the House Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee.