ALTERNET – It was another tough year for the coal industry. In the last 25 months
not one coal-fired power plant broke ground for construction in the
United States. In 2010 alone a total of 38 proposed plants were erased
from the drawing board, the most ever recorded in a single year.
Utilities also announced 12,000 MW in coal plant retirements — or
enough power to bring electricity to a whopping 12 million American
households. And even Massey Energy’s infamous henchman Don Blankenship
is set to retire, effective next month.
Indeed coal executives got what they deserved in their stockings this
holiday season — big lumps of black coal. “I predict historians will
point at 2010 as the year that coal’s influence peaked and began
declining,” says Bruce Nilles, deputy conservation director of the
Sierra Club, whose organization released a year-end report on coal in
the U.S.
Nilles is correct; the coal boom out west looks to be over, as
companies like Arch and Peabody scramble to figure out what to do with
their vast reserves while U.S. markets begin to dwindle. The EPA has
also not been as friendly to this portion of the energy sector as in
years past, placing most coal permits for mountaintop removal on hold
and even recommending a veto of the proposed Spruce Mine in West
Virginia, which would be the largest of its kind in the country.
Click to continue reading about the fight against coal.
Article by Joshua Frank / AlterNet
Photograph by flickr user eutrophication&hypoxia