Coal extraction poses climate challenge for Obama administration

The Powder River Basin accounts for 43 percent, more than all of the coal produced east of the Mississippi River.

Part of this shift stems from two centuries of traditional coal mining in the East depleting reserves in central Appalachia.

Graphic

Coal production shifts to the West

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And the mountaintop-removal practice used in the region has been curtailed on the grounds that resulting “valley fills” undermine local water quality. Final guidance on the practice issued by the EPA in July has come under legal challenge, but in the meantime, operators say, the new policy has stalled surface mining permits in states such as Kentucky and West Virginia.

Bill Bissett, executive director of the Kentucky Coal Association, said operators are concerned about what they’ll do when they’re finished mining on their current permits. In September, the EPA denied 19 surface mining permits in eastern Kentucky; Bissett estimated that translates into nearly 125.5 million short tons of lost coal production and 950 mining jobs over the life of the mines.

Powder River Basin

Increasingly, both the mining industry and environmentalists have focused on the Powder River Basin, where coal extraction has more than doubled over the past two decades. In 1990, the federal government made the decision to “decertify” the area as a coal production region, a move that allows coal companies to identify which tracts of land they’d like to lease rather than having the Bureau of Land Management select them.

According to Sanzillo, the facts that firms can access relatively inexpensive coal in the region and now enjoy the prospect of an expanded export market in China and other developing nations “place a major upward price premium on Powder River Basin coal for the coming decades.”

Companies such as Peabody, which declined to comment for this article, can earn three-to-five times more on sales of Powder River Basic coal overseas than in standard domestic sales. The firms are pushing for new terminals in Washington and Oregon from which they could ship tens of millions of tons of coal per year.

The Bureau of Land Management did not hold lease sales in Wyoming in 2009 or 2010 but has held four this year. Marion Loomis, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association, said the industry is “very pleased the Department of Interior has started [leasing] again, and we hope that continues.”

But environmental advocacy groups are doing their best to stop it. Bruce Nilles, who directs the Sierra Club’s Midwest Clean Energy Campaign, noted that NASA scientist James E. Hansen has predicted coal combustion must cease by 2035 to avoid dangerous global warming.

“Everybody knows Appalachian coal is going away,” Nilles said. “But the big play is the Powder River Basin.”

Sierra Club and WildEarth Guardians have seven cases challenging federal coal leases there on several grounds, including their potential contribution to climate change. Using BLM estimates, WildEarth Guardians calculates the Powder River Basin coal that either has been approved for leasing or is pending approval will emit an estimated 11.37 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, almost twice the amount of greenhouse gases released in the entire United States in 2009.

Evolving approach

WildEarth Guardians’ general counsel, Jay Tutchon, describes his group’s strategy as “keep the coal in the hole,” as opposed to BLM, which he said “views its mission as ‘get this coal out of the ground and sell it.’ ”

The Interior Department has prepared documents, obtained by The Washington Post, which BLM land-use planners use to provide field  offices with direction on how to conduct a greenhouse gas analysis of coal leases. They include phrases such as “increasing concentrations of [greenhouse gases] are likely to accelerate the rate of climate change,” and “several activities contribute to the phenomena of climate change, including emissions of GHGs (especially carbon dioxide and methane) from fossil fuel development.”

When BLM applies this analysis to leasing, however, it often emphasizes that prohibiting mining in the Powder River Basin won’t cut greenhouse gas emissions. In its Record of Decision for the North Porcupine Coal Lease, it states, “BLM disagrees with the comment that denying the proposed Federal coal leasing application would consequentially reduce the overall rate of national coal consumption by electric generators. . . . Issuing a Federal coal lease for the North Porcupine tract would not result in the creation of new sources of human-caused GHG or mercury emissions.”

Hayes, the deputy Interior secretary, said when it comes to BLM officials, “there has been an evolution in their approach under this administration, from the time we walked in the door.

“Let’s be forthright on identifying the full greenhouse gas effects, including those downstream,” he said, adding when it comes to extracting coal in the United States, “we know it’s likely to be used as a fuel, it’s going to be combusted, and there will be greenhouse gas implications to that.”