Heartland Daily Podcast

Hello, and welcome to the Hartland Institute Daily Podcast. It's been a while for me, but I'm Sterling Burnett, director of the Arthur b Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy. Contrary to what's being portrayed in the media, coal, both for fuel for electricity production and industrial uses, remains vital to the reliability and affordability of the US power supply and industrial base and the power supply and industrial production around the world. Despite the US' advantages vis a vis a plentiful domestic availability of coal, federal various federal and state governments, in their futile effort to control the climate have enacted policies that have led to a decline in coal power in the US.

Initially, utilities concerned about reliability and stranded assets fought these efforts, but as government support for green energy ramped up, utilities increasingly embraced prematurely cut shuttering coal plants even at the expense of grid reliability and sustainability and electric power rising electric power costs, which they don't really care about because they're routinely allowed to pass on the higher cost to ratepayers and taxpayers. Basically, they were ready to take in all the subsidies government would pass on to them. One effort to write and reverse this trend is the not so fast campaign. Not so fast has a website detailing the facts and myths about coal and why it remains vital to America's and the world's well-being. I'm pleased to have Matt I'm gonna just, try it here.

Matt Makhowiak, and if I mispronounce that, Matt, sorry, a government affairs manager at Console Energy, a company which has been helping Power America for a 160 years now. He heads up the Not So Fast campaign, here to discuss it today. Matt, thanks for joining us.

Thanks, Sterling. I I wish the name could be a little easier, but you hit it right on the dot. Matt Metkoiak. Thanks for having me on today.

And I should should've practiced it a couple of times before I got you on there.

No. That that's alright. No. No worries. Yes.

I'm currently manager of government affairs at CONSOL Energy based in Pennsylvania where I, I closely monitor all the legislative and regulatory issues that affect not only our core business, but the coal industry as a whole. And that's both at the the federal level and the state level in the states that we operate in. Before I came to console, I was a staffer for a member of congress, and I was also a staffer in the Pennsylvania State Senate as well.

So, how did you wind up joining console and then, you know, eventually heading up the not so fast effort?

Yes. I I came to console because I worked in the area when I was working in, for the member of congress and the issues that were important to the district are also, important to me and and I grew very familiar with that. So when there was an opening here, I was lucky enough to get with CONSOL and very quickly, we started up an Opto Fast campaign about 2 or so years ago, because we realized that we needed to challenge the current narrative that's out there regarding the speed of the energy transition. There's a lot of timelines and goals set as part of the transition that are completely unrealistic. And a lot of people think that the coal industry is dead, that we don't really have a place in the future or that we don't need it anymore for any reason.

Right.

But the truth is far from that. So we wanted to combat that. The goal of our campaign is to just educate policymakers, corporate leaders, to the general public about coal and why it's important today, and it'll continue to be important well into the future.

You you jumped ahead a bit to some of my questions, but we'll go. So your core message is coal still has a vital place in America's future. Why is it vital to America?

Yeah. Apologies for dropping ahead. I get so excited about this stuff. It's vital because it's in every part of our lives, you know, in addition to electricity generation, which it still does to a lesser extent than before. But in addition to that, you know, we rely on coal for steel production, steel, concrete production, other things like water filtration and fertilizers, the things that we need to keep us healthy and, and enjoy the standard of living that we have.

It's it's responsible for so many parts of our lives, and we just can't do away with it.

Yeah. I don't think people realize that coal is used to turn iron into steel, and, you know, the the ash is put into concrete and, you know, a different type of coal. We use charcoal, of course, in our in our grills. But, so what does not so fast campaign hope to achieve and how?

Through the campaign, we just wanna convince our audience to take a more measured, balanced, analytical, even more moral approach to our nation's energy policies, particularly also when it comes to coal and how it affects their lives every day. We're gonna do this by introducing the audience to the facts and and ask them to take a look at our sources, take a look at the data that we present on our website. And, you know, we just ask them to draw their own conclusions based on that data on their own analysis, and to not make decisions based solely on a a narrative or the things that they're told.

Yeah. I know when I first started working in this field, coal was, I think, 40 45% of the nation's electric system. Nuclear was another 20%, so there's 65%. I think, hydroelectric was about 10, so there's 70%, and, you know, natural gas and some others made up the rest. I think what's coal down to now?

30% less? Yeah?

Yeah. It's a lot less than it used to be. It it's less than 20%. Now, obviously, it's

Oh, wow.

Okay. On demand. Yeah. It's it's it's gonna be less than 20% now. Globally, there's a an increased demand, though, so we we Yeah.

Seen that in the last couple of years.

A big drop in a very, very short period of time here, but, demand is growing, overseas. I think y'all probably do some shipping overseas.

We do.

Even even in western you know, even in Europe, where they have, been ahead of us in a lot of climate stuff. Now they're reopening old coal plants because they're coming to understand that wind and solar doesn't fit the bill for baseload power.

Yeah. Yeah. That that that's a I'm glad you brought that up. That's a key point to hit on because they they did it, differently than than we've been doing it. So they're a little bit smarter in the fact that whenever they closed their coal plants, they didn't tear them down right away.

Yeah.

So they

ran into an issue whenever, obviously, you had the the Russian Ukrainian war. They could just fire those coal plants up again and, you know, bring production back. But for us, you know, the minute we close the coal plant down, we want to demolish it. So if that there's a big difference there, you know, I'm glad you brought that up to highlight that.

Well, that may happen in some places, but I think there's some coal plants in Texas that we've closed mistakenly, foolishly closed. It's left us in a bind in a couple of instances, but I think they're still, operable because, when we had a winter storm that that really shut down power, it's my understanding that they started shipping coal back to these plants, so they had to be operable. Or you don't ship coal to something that can't burn coal.

Yeah. And, thankfully, those were still in place. Yeah. A lot of them aren't, but that that's a that was a benefit.

So, Matt, the not so fast website has a section titled coal myths. What are some of those top myths?

I think one of the more interesting ones to talk about is that, you know, there's this myth that renewable energy technologies are carbon free, But that's a myth, because, you know, like, take the wind energy, for example. For every megawatt of onshore wind capacity that that you make, or that you build, you'll need about a 100 tons of coal to produce that. So coal is closely tied to construction of those, forms of energy. And then another one of my my favorite ones is that to achieve a carbon free electricity system by 2,035, I think, is the stated goal. You know, we could just replace fossil fuels with renewables, and we're all set.

That's all we need to do. But it it's gonna take a lot more than that. You know, a good example that I like to use is that we're gonna need a lot more transmission lines in the United States to even hope that that's possible. Over 10,000 miles constructed per year. That's if we get started in 2026.

And I'm just gonna put that into perspective. Last year, we ended up we we built around 200 miles of new transmission lines in the US that year. So, you know, that that's a it's a very heavy lift.

Well, it's impossible. Physically impossible lift. We don't have the rare earth minerals for all the wind and solar for the battery backup. That's why even as they build wind and solar, what they're doing is building natural gas plants. And they say it's, well, it's backup.

No. It's not backup. Natural gas supplies most of the power, and they feed in they're they're almost forced to feed in wind and solar when it's available, even even at the cost. I mean, that's that's why some of the coal plants have closed. It's not because they're uncompetitive or they don't work.

It's because when wind and solar are working, they can sell power into the grid at even negative prices because of the federal subsidies they get paid whether they're losing money or not, and coal can't compete with that. That has to be operating. It's like a it's like a hotel, it's like a private hotel across the street from a publicly owned hotel. The private hotel has to have a certain, room, certain amount of rooms filled, a percentage of rooms filled all the time to cover its cost, the public hotel, if it loses money, well, the taxpayers can pick it up. That's what happens with wind and solar.

Exactly. Yeah. And and then people also don't, take into consideration the the difference between the dependable base load Yeah. Forms of power and the intermittent ones too. So they don't a lot of them, they don't really realize that's a there's a distinction there.

Oh, it's it's it's it's both base load power but also peaking power. You can't say wind, we need peaking power now. Hurry, blow. Exactly. Or in the middle of the night, people increase demand, because they've come home and the sun's not shining.

Sun, come back up real quick. We need we need you producing power. It doesn't work that way. Exactly. Yeah.

So, well, you know, go through a couple of more coal mists before we move on because I think you had a whole list, and I'm gonna advocate that people go to your site and and check them all out. But some things particular to coal.

Yeah. A lot of people still think that coal mining as an industry is dirty, obsolete, unsafe. You know, there's there's been heavy advances in that. As far as it being dirty or or obsolete from an environmental perspective, I mean, there's been 2,800,000 acres of land restored by US mining companies since the seventies. So there's there's been a, you know, huge improvement there.

Consult ourselves, you know, we we pride ourselves in a 99.9% environmental compliance record. It's important to us. And I think it's a lot a lot that's something that a lot of people don't realize. You know, we like to be outside. We like to be you know, we're outdoorsman.

We wanna keep it keep it nice out there. So we're not in the business of just trying to tear things down.

So, you mentioned it earlier, but as I mentioned and we as we discussed, coal isn't just used to generate energy. Talk about how it's used in these other products.

Yeah. So generation aside, obviously, steel and concrete and brick making, those are some popular uses. Obviously, things that we need, things that you know, the developing nations around the world need to. They get, you know, to lift their people out of out of, poverty and bring them a better standard of living. Coal does that.

It does that for those those countries through, you know, infrastructure development. Water filtration, fertilizers, like I said, those things are going to help keep us healthy and keep us fed and and with clean water. One of the the most exciting things that coal can do, though, I'm I'm I'm pretty excited about this topic, It has uses for a lot of other things in the future. I think we're we're just kinda scratching the surface for now. Consol Energy created a subsidiary called Consol Innovations last year, and that group is tasked with developing new and improved uses across the coal value chain.

So what I mean by that is, we produce something called carbon foam, and the carbon foam comes directly from coal, 100% coal. And it's it ends up being fire resistant and lightweight. It's a brittle material, but it's used in the aerospace and defense industries currently to make aerospace tooling. So they're making airplane wings and nose cones using this carbon foam, using these tools. And it can also be used in a lot of building materials like decking material, battery components.

There's a it seems to be the sky's the limit for this stuff. So that's an exciting new use that we are putting a lot of time into researching from Console Innovations.

I mean, it's still a vital industry. You you produce a lot of jobs here. You, you you ship it overseas, to our allies and, our competitors. Probably, we should be expanding coal export terminals in my opinion. I didn't think about the bricks.

I guess cinder blocks cinders the the cinder and cinder blocks is is coal ash. Correct?

Yeah. I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. And and bricks even just in the brick kilns too to keep those,

Oh, yeah.

Those tiles up to to cook the bricks. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep. Okay. So, Matt, we we've covered a lot of ground in a very short period of time. But in closing, what is the single most important point you'd like our listeners to take away from our conversation today about Cole and the not so fast project?

And then tell them, you know, where they can find more information about it.

Yeah. So I mean, you know, if they haven't picked it up by now, I I think the biggest takeaway is that coal isn't dead and it's nowhere close. We're gonna need it well into the future for for almost everything that we rely on. Obviously, we talked about generating electricity, construction materials, lifting nations out of poverty. The reason you and I really are are able to sit here today, on this podcast, I think, is, you know, it's all thanks to Cole.

We need to take a look at the facts and the the stats that are out there. And when it comes to the energy transition, remember that coal just can't simply go away overnight, and we gotta pump the brakes and consider the the unintended consequences of where we're headed. So that's why we we tell people, hey. Not so fast. And, I would encourage listeners to check out our website.

It's the coalhardtruth.com. That's coal sorry about the pun. Hopefully, that's, makes it easy to remember, though. But the the coalhardtruth.com is where you can find, you know, the the myths and the the data to to back up why they're not true, all kinds of other information on the industry. And, hopefully, we'll allow, you know, your audience members to arm themselves with the facts and with the data so that they're they're more well informed as part of the energy debate.

And we just encourage you to check out the website, do the research, make your own analysis, and make your own decisions from there.

Well, you know, you raised a point. And so before I let you go, I wanna I wanna follow-up on that point. You indicated there's there's dangers or hazards from a premature phase out of coal. What what are some of those things off the top of your head?

Well, the big thing, you know, if we rush too quickly into this, we are taking the liable power off the grid before we have the capabilities to replenish it. Couple that with increased demand from data center, a lot of other things, you're gonna wind up with energy insecurity and, you know, a lot of our rare earth materials that are coming from other places like China, or other other parts of the world, you know, that that makes us kind of in a bind because we're out once producing them. So I think we have to remember that.

Yeah. I mean, look, natural gas, I don't know how long how much supply we have. When I was first started working on this, they were talking about 40 to 60 years. I think they say now up. We're over a 100 years because of new technologies to discover it.

Of course, the wind is unlimited. The sun will shine, but they're intermittent. We have, what, 400 year supply of coal, and that's not dependent on China. In fact, we're exporting coal to China.

We yeah. We are. And the United States has the most abundant coal reserves in the world. So I think that's important to remember too.

Basically, the coal benefits us from an economic and national security perspective.

Absolutely.

Well, Matt, it's been a pleasure speaking with you. I wanna thank you on behalf of myself and our listeners and encourage them to go to your website.

Yep. Thank you very much. I encourage that as well. The coalhearttruth.com. Thanks again for your time today.

Yep. Thank you. So, listeners, thanks for checking on us today. Please check Heartland's website as we continue to cover America's energy policy, Kohl's continuing role in it, and the efforts of the Not So Fast project. I also hope that you'll follow us as we track the progress of energy, environmental laws, and regulations that affect you.

And if you're not already receiving these podcasts daily on your favorite device, go to iTunes and subscribe. And when you have the time, please rate our podcast on iTunes so you can help us expand the reach of free market ideas. You might also check out our weekly climate realism Show every Friday on your favorite social media streaming service, where Anthony Watts, Linnea Lukin, myself, and almost weekly guest discuss the climate or energy topic of the week, complete with taking questions from viewers and the crazy climate news of the week. Thanks. Take care.