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In The Bakken Oilfield, An Explosion In Electricity Demand
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Demand for electricity in North Dakota’s Bakken oilfield has skyrocketed. How have local utilities met the demand? And how have they done it without coal?
Inside Energy (https://insideenergy.org/series/futureofcoal/page/6/)
Between federal regulations to restrict carbon dioxide emissions and mercury pollution, cheap natural gas, and concerns about climate change, the coal industry in this country is under threat. Since 2012 nearly 60 coal-burning power plants have partially or completely shut down. But the dirty fuel still supplies 40% of our power and is critical, proponents say, for maintaining the reliability of our electricity infrastructure.
We want to know: What is the future of coal in the United States? How have federal regulations impacted its use across the country? How is the transition off of coal being felt in coal-dependent communities and states? Are there ways to burn and use coal that are cleaner, and will lessen its negative environmental impact? Inside Energy has covered these issues in a series of stories produced in collaboration with Allegheny Front, West Virginia Public Broadcasting, and High Plains News. We continue to report on these stories as they unfold.
Demand for electricity in North Dakota’s Bakken oilfield has skyrocketed. How have local utilities met the demand? And how have they done it without coal?
Coal has long been the bedrock of our electric grid. Could environmental regulations threaten the reliability of that system? Inside Energy’s Leigh Paterson reports in our latest installment of Blackout: Reinventing the Grid.
Coal production in Colorado’s North Fork Valley has fallen 90 percent since 2008. And as coal declines, the culture of the valley is changing.
Even though Wyoming has been the top coal-producing state since 1988 and its coal culture runs deep, the image of the Appalachian coal miner persists in American popular culture. Why? Perhaps because most coal miners still work in Appalachia, even though most coal comes from Wyoming. In 2012, for example, Wyoming produced about 40% of U.S. coal but employed only 8% of coal miners.
Nationally, coal production is down and being challenged by market forces and new federal regulations. Ironically, Wyoming’s rise to dominance as the country’s top coal-producing state started 45 years ago with another regulation: The Clean Air Act of 1970.
Politico | April 16 is the day the Obama Administration’s mercury pollution rule goes into effect for the vast majority of American coal-fired power plants. It may be the beginning of the end for the fuel that remains the number one fuel for U.S. electricity.
Rancher L.J. Turner reflects on the impact coal mining has had on his land and on Wyoming in this video from EarthFix, a public media partnership in the Pacific Northwest focusing on the environment.
As the Appalachian coal industry has disappeared, coal has moved west, to the Powder River Basin of Wyoming. That state now produces 40 percent of the nation’s coal and that production has left an impact on the land.
With coal mining in decline, former miners in West Virginia and Kentucky look to reinvent themselves.
Coal is in a long decline in Central Appalachia. Even though coal mining jobs are disappearing there-the imprint of coal on the landscape is everywhere. More than a million acres of strip-mined land — an area the size of Rhode Island — are now deforested. As part of a reporting project from The Allegheny Front on the future of coal, Reid Frazier went to Eastern Kentucky to see what will happen to the land once coal is gone.