Suddenly, Dirty Old Coal Is the Fossil Fuel of the Future

The National Mining Assn. represents a fuel that many Americans think went out with Charles Dickens.

Just last week, a California congressman’s aide asked an association lobbyist wide-eyed: “Do we still use coal in this country?”

The answer is yes--and lots of it. More than half of America’s electricity is coal-fired, but polls show that most Americans don’t know it.

Considered the voice of coal in Washington, the mining association has been denigrated by critics as a venal hired gun for an industry that doesn’t give a whit about acid rain, global warming, black lung disease or slag heaps that scar the land. The industry was under siege in the final years of the Clinton administration, when Washington launched an aggressive effort to make owners of coal-fired power plants undertake expensive pollution control improvements.

“It was like waking up every morning with a six-chamber gun pointed at your head, and each chamber contained a lethal bullet,” said Thomas Altmeyer, the association’s top lobbyist.

Suddenly, it’s a new day for coal in America. That much became clear to Altmeyer the other day as he found himself at the White House, where Vice President Dick Cheney personally briefed about 40 industry types on the Bush administration’s new energy plan.

“It was really nice to hear it from him,” says Altmeyer.

A lot has changed in the short time since George W. Bush beat Al Gore in West Virginia (and lots of other places), and California’s power crisis transformed dirty old coal into a fossil fuel of the future.

Now, when the mining association faxes position papers to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, they are read. Now, when its lobbyists call over to the U.S. Interior Department with suggestions for job candidates, they talk with old friends occupying key positions. Now, those at the top don’t need to be told that coal supplies more than half of America’s electricity: Bush comes from Texas, which uses more coal-fired power than any other state in the union; Cheney hails from Wyoming, the largest coal-producing state.

When the Bush-Cheney team took over, mining association employees were invited to serve on transition teams. The White House had not had a new occupant but two months before Bush reversed himself on carbon dioxide emissions, deciding to forgo new rules on a gas that scientists say contributes to global warming. Coal-fired power plants are a key source of the gas.

Yet, like poor relatives who have finally been invited over for Christmas dinner, the coal people are not quite comfortable with their newfound popularity in Washington. When asked how it feels to go from class pariah to homecoming king, the best that Altmeyer and his boss, mining association President Jack Gerard, can come up with is that they’re, well . . . pleased.

But their friends know better: The chief of staff to a Southern Republican senator said he saw the usually low-key, all-business Altmeyer at an inaugural party in January. “He was downright elated,” said the aide, chuckling.

A coal-friendly Democratic senator slapped Altmeyer on the back at a fund-raiser recently and said, “Tom, I can’t believe it, but we really have an opportunity to do something. All the liberal senators are running scared about this California energy crisis. Now they’ll listen to us.” The next day, Altmeyer shipped him a list of suggestions to share with his liberal colleagues.

“We’re not going to waste this opportunity to educate people, no way,” says Altmeyer.

The association’s president, Gerard, 42, a native of Idaho and a former consultant to the mining industry, is not ready to celebrate. He is new at his job: He took over the NMA shortly before Bush took over the White House, but he has been around mining long enough to remember other times when the industry was left for dead but rebounded with an energy crisis.

And so, he says, he is merely “cautiously optimistic.”

“You might sense some excitement in the industry,” he allows, “that we have a White House that recognizes the facts.” He then rattles off a bunch: The U.S. has enough reserves in the ground to burn coal at its current rate for 250 years; since implementation of the 1970 Clean Air Act, coal use for electricity has tripled while emissions have dropped 30%.

“We play an important role in society and the White House knows it,” Gerard says. “Does that make us gleeful? Not necessarily.”

Perhaps it’s because coal is still a hard sell to many people.

Gerard is the speaker at a conference of 400 scientists interested in “carbon sequestration,” a theoretical solution to coal’s contribution to global warming. But he spends about half of his time attacking environmentalists and saying things like, “California represents a failed experiment in energy policy.”

When a professor takes issue with his combative “tone,” Gerard smiles pleasantly. He is not fazed. On the cab ride back to his office, he explains, “Look, the professor is looking for a technical paper. That’s not what we do. I’m trying to talk about what is at stake and the future.”

In recent years, the NMA has tried to refashion its industry’s dark legacy and image. It spent less time calling scientific evidence against coal “bunk” and more time on the bandwagon to clean up three of the four main pollutants caused by its use. And now coal-related businesses are trying to act like winners. Besides backing Bush’s $2-billion plan for more “clean coal” technology, they’re spending $10 million of their own money on a campaign to buff up their image.

More than image-building, however, the real work of the mining association these days is in the massive Capitol building and House and Senate offices. There is where the administration’s energy plan will be fashioned into action; there is where the president’s budget will buy the coal industry time to develop new anti-pollution technology; there is where they can get government to ease up.

Altmeyer is a tall, strapping fellow. But, although he was born in West Virginia, he wasn’t born to its coal. His father was an undertaker.

After earning degrees in law and business, Altmeyer went to work for the late Democratic Sen. Jennings Randolph of West Virginia, and he got to know “lots of coal miners who were proud of what they’re doing,” he says.

In the mid-1980s, he went with a trade association that evolved into the NMA. He has spent most of his career shepherding companies through anti-pollution legislation.

He can’t quite abide the way coal is treated like a “black hat” in the media--even now. “You don’t see banner headlines, ‘U.S. has record coal production in the year 2000, and we did it in a way much more environmentally responsible.’ ”

Instead, he says, media reports emphasize renegade coal companies that break laws and exaggerated claims about climate change.

But coal has never been appealing to California, which uses very little coal-fired power because it’s so dirty. California Resources Secretary Mary Nichols does not buy the coal lobby’s Rodney Dangerfield act.

“They don’t get no respect?” mocks Nichols, who ran the EPA’s air and radiation department for President Clinton. “But they have over the years. We’ve spent billions trying to clean up coal. Nobody is suggesting we stop. But how much attention should it get as a fuel of the future? Not much, because under any scenario, the cost of cleaning up carbon emissions and the way it’s mined is too high.”

Altmeyer is no fan of Nichols, either. It may be a new day, but the old battles remain fresh.

“It was like living in a banana republic with a dictator who made arbitrary decisions,” he says of the Clinton years. He won’t even speculate what the industry would be facing if Gore had been elected president. “I would have rather had Woody Allen in the White House.”