Appalachia Coal Report Adds Fuel to Kennedy-Blankenship Smackdown

On Thursday night, environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will step onto a stage in the heart of Appalachian coal country to debate Mr. Coal himself, Massey Energy CEO and global warming skeptic Don Blankenship.

There’s little question who has the home field advantage at the University of Charleston in West Virginia.

Most of Massey’s mining sites are in West Virginia, as are many of the country’s mountaintop coal mining operations. Mining is so prevalent here that coal companies and the utilities that burn the fossil fuel account for two-thirds of the state’s business tax revenue.

When it comes to concerns about the way mountaintop mining operations degrade water quality in Appalachia, Blankenship told colleagues at a Christmas party:

"EPA stands for 'Equal Poverty for All’. They don't appreciate coal. In fact, they think coal is a bad thing. They're exporting our jobs and destroying our economy and telling us not to be worried about it.”

Kennedy, president of the New York-based Waterkeeper Alliance, is equally clear about his fight to end mountaintop mining:

“Mountaintop removal has devastated, corrupted and impoverished West Virginia, but it is not just a local issue. The devastating ripples from these blasts reverberate across the country and around the world, in the form of mercury in all of our watersheds, coal ash poisoning our drinking water, ozone and particulates that sicken our citizens, and escalating global warming. There is no more important issue facing our nation than our energy future,” Kennedy said when the debate was announced.

A new report out today from a West Virginia-based consulting firm should give Kennedy more fire power on the economics of coal mining in Appalachia.

His environmental concerns were already bolstered by a recent report by a group of hydrologists, ecologists and engineers who concluded that mountaintop mining’s “impacts are pervasive and irreversible and that mitigation cannot compensate for losses," and another last fall by Physicians for Social Responsibility that found serious health risks from coal throughout its lifecycle.

The Future of Appalachian Coal

The latest report, by Downstream Strategies of Morgantown, W.Va., charts the increasing cost of producing coal in Appalachia and the need for economic diversification to protect the region.

It warns that Appalachia’s coal industry is becoming less competitive with other coal regions, particularly Montana and Wyoming's Powder River Basin. More U.S. power plants are now equipped to handle cheaper coal, and the cost of mining Central Appalachia's coal is rising as the most productive coal reserves are being depleted. On top of that, the region faces more competition from other energy sources, such as natural gas, and the threat of regulation of mountaintop mining.

Even though Central Appalachia’s overall coal reserves remain large, studies suggests that mining companies will have to deal with thinner, less accessible coal seams in the coming decade.

As coal becomes harder to mine, productivity declines and production costs increase; generating energy from Central Appalachian coal will become more expensive, and utilities that burn the coal will look for other sources, write Downstream Strategies founder Evan Hansen and researcher Rory McIlmoil, both environmental science and policy experts.