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Big milestones are upon us in the shift from coal to clean energy. Last week the utility Vistra announced it would retire four Illinois coal plants, on the heels of news that Southern Company will retire two coal plants in Georgia, bringing us to a total of 296 US coal plants announced to retire since 2010. That means coal plant retirement #300 is just around the corner and in the US we are on track to meet the call of the world’s climate scientists to phase out coal power by 2030. And in April for the first time in our nation’s history, we generated more power from renewable energy than from coal.
I know, there’s a lot of scary news out there – the Amazon and the Arctic are burning, July was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth, and Ohio recently passed what Dave Roberts of Vox called “the worst energy bill of the 21st century.” But stop for a moment and consider the amazing energy milestones we’re reaching in the US with every passing month. Within them, we’ll find some of the keys we need to unlock solutions to the climate crisis.
When I first started working on coal over 15 years ago, I was executive director of a wonderful organization that’s still thriving, Appalachian Voices, and we were trying to stop the coal mining practice of blowing up entire mountains, known as mountaintop removal, a highly destructive form of mining that still continues to this day. One of the most consistent arguments I heard against ending mountaintop removal went something like this: “We get half of our electricity from coal. It’s always been that way, and it always will be. If we don’t have this coal, our lights will go out and our electricity bills will skyrocket.”
Now here we are, and renewable energy is providing more power than coal for the first time in our nation’s history – a mere 20 percent of our electricity came from coal in April, down from 50 percent a decade ago. And guess what? Our lights haven’t gone out. Our electricity bills haven’t skyrocketed.
If anything, it’s coal that’s threatening to send our electric bills through the roof. Coal can no longer compete with renewable energy in most parts of the country, and our aging fleet of coal plants are offering power that’s much more costly than the renewable energy and the market price of electricity.
Stop for a moment and consider the amazing energy milestones we’re reaching in the US with every passing month.
That’s why the industry is so desperately seeking the kinds of bailouts that we saw this summer in Ohio. Coal and dirty energy interests have a staggering amount of influence over the state legislature in the Buckeye State, which passed a bill that will jack up the electricity bills for families to prop up two coal plants and two nuclear plants - plants selling electricity that’s so expensive no one wants to buy it. So this new legislation will force Ohio families and businesses to buy that coal power at a premium. It also allows obsolete coal plants to take up space in the market that could have been filled by clean energy, putting Ohio at risk of watching the clean energy economy pass it by, while neighboring states reap the benefits.
Who benefits from the Ohio bailout bill? To no one’s surprise I’m sure, it’s the wealthy executives behind FirstEnergy Solutions. The company is the bankrupt affiliate of FirstEnergy Corp - the parent company that has been putting forward every effort to rid itself of FirstEnergy Solutions - and includes a portfolio of uneconomic dirty generation that can only compete against clean energy by using bailouts as a business model.
It’s a story as old as the hills of West Virginia where I live, one we see repeated in the recent string of mining company bankruptcies, as executives line their pockets on the way out the door and leave regular families and communities to foot the bill. In Harlan County, Kentucky, coal miners are in their fifth week of blocking the railroad tracks to stop a trainload of coal that they mined from leaving the mountains, after mining company Blackjewel declared bankruptcy and their final paychecks bounced. As Sierra Club attorney Peter Morgan put it, “This Revelation/Blackjewel filing is the beginning of phase two of the coal bankruptcy cycle, and it’s going to be devastating.” That’s because after years of spinning off companies and cycling through bankruptcies as executives pocketed the profits, the industry is reaching a point where there are no more buyers.
The reality is clear - the days when coal had a lock on our electric sector are over, and clean energy’s momentum keeps growing. Seven states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have passed 100 percent clean energy standards, and major utilities like Consumers and NIPSCO are phasing out their coal or even going 100 percent carbon free. That’s why we need a transition to clean energy that supports workers and communities – rather than the empty promises currently coming from Washington and our statehouses in coal mining states.
The April renewable milestone and all those clean energy commitments didn’t just happen because of market forces. They happened because of a focused, determined grassroots movement that isn’t slowing down. And with federal and state leadership and resources, we can also move this nation off of coal and fracked gas without leaving anyone behind. We don’t have to settle for bankruptcies, bailouts, and broken promises.
Here are three lessons I’ve learned over the past decade of working in the Beyond Coal movement - we can do more than anyone thinks possible, it won’t be easy, and we need a clean energy transition that supports workers and communities. As the climate crisis barrels down on us, as the inevitable setbacks occur, take a step back and take heart from all the progress we’ve made together. Stop again and think about that milestone, about the fact that in less than a decade, grassroots determination knocked King Coal off its throne and handed the crown to renewable energy. I can’t wait to see what the next decade - a pivotal decade for the fate of our planet - has in store.