Inside Energy (https://insideenergy.org/tag/cloud-peak-energy/)
A changing climate may be bad PR for fossil fuels, but it could help their bottom line. Two major coal companies released earnings reports in late July stating how higher temperatures could mean more energy use, which could ease some coal stockpiles.
President Trump is directing the Environmental Protection Agency to revise or get rid of the most significant climate regulation of the Obama Administration — the Clean Power Plan. Trump signed an executive order to “suspend, revise, or rescind” the plan at the EPA headquarters Tuesday.
Glance at a satellite image of northeast Wyoming, and you can’t miss the coal mines. Even zoomed out, the square-cornered grey blotches stand out—stretching north to south over more than 70 miles. But if all goes according to plan, someday, when the mining is done, those scars will disappear, erased from the landscape by intensive reclamation efforts. Coal companies are on the hook for that cleanup, but the industry’s recent collapse has raised questions about whether they will actually be able to meet those obligations.
Conventional wisdom has it that without baseload power—coal and nuclear plants running in the background at all times—the grid will become unreliable. After all, how could wind and solar keep the lights on when they are so inherently variable? But now, a growing number of people are challenging that idea. In this interview, Jesse Morris, with the Rocky Mountain Institute, argues baseload power isn’t necessary.
A panel that makes recommendations on whether new federal coal projects should move forward has given the green light to two proposals in Montana and Wyoming.
The dispute over royalties paid for coal, natural gas and oil extracted from public lands centers over two issues: Are the royalties too low? Do we know enough about the accounting to assure the American taxpayer is getting a good deal? Amy Martin digs in, with some help from Taylor Swift.
How much coal does a Wyoming coal miner mine? Quite a bit less than he used to, it turns out. Regulations have received most of the blame for coal’s current downturn but that’s not the whole story; it’s also getting more expensive to mine in the nation’s largest coal producing state.
