Wind advocates counter that a recent report obscures the potential for long-term employment as the industry continues to grow.

While offshore wind developers are promising tens of thousands of U.S. jobs from wind farm development along the East Coast over the next decade, the commercial fishing industry is sowing doubt about the projections. 

An economic analysis commissioned by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a fishing industry coalition, concludes that “a surprisingly low” number of new positions will be permanent, and that the bulk of jobs will be created overseas. 

“The claim that the huge investments on offshore wind would provide significant job and economic benefits in the U.S. has been grossly inflated,” wrote the report’s author, Janet Liang, an economist with Georgetown Economic Services, a consulting firm. 

Wind industry representatives are not convinced by the findings, however. So long as Eastern Seaboard states can provide sufficient training to help businesses and workers capitalize on wind industry opportunities, the economic benefit is bound to be substantial, said Liz Burdock, chief executive and president of the Business Network for Offshore Wind. 

“The number that I point to, which is based on annual aggregate data, is what’s happened in Europe, where offshore wind sustains 40,000 jobs,” Burdock said. “I feel fairly confident that we’re going to hit or exceed that number with what we have in the pipeline now.” 

The Georgetown report comes as federal regulators near a long-awaited decision on Vineyard Wind, which is poised to become the nation’s first utility-scale offshore wind farm. Fishing industry interests are imploring regulators to fully consider the impacts on fisheries. While state economic development officials tout offshore wind as an economic boon, some in the fishing industry feel the projections don’t take into account the potential damage to their sector.

“We are … concerned about the displacement and disruption that offshore wind projects will have on the commercial fishing sector,” said Fred Mattera, executive director of the Commercial Fisheries Center of Rhode Island, in comments submitted earlier this year to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. “Currently, the fisheries economy in the Northeast provides billions in revenue to local communities and tens of thousands of jobs.” 

The Georgetown analysis acknowledges that its overall findings are broadly consistent with an economic impact assessment issued last spring by the American Wind Energy Association. That report projected that offshore wind would support between 45,000 and 83,000 jobs by 2030, assuming that 20 to 30 gigawatts of wind power is up and running by then. 

The Georgetown report actually predicts an even higher number of jobs — up to 93,000 by 2030. But it parts ways with the wind association in its interpretation of how those jobs will be distributed. 

The report anticipates that most of the skilled construction workers who will assemble the turbines and erect the towers will come from other countries. 

And it makes a much more conservative estimate of the number of permanent workers — as opposed to temporary construction workers — that will be needed to operate and maintain the wind farms. 

In a statement accompanying the report’s release last month, the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance said “the American public should be highly concerned over misrepresentation of the economic benefits of offshore wind energy.”

But Nancy Sopko, previously with the American Wind Energy Association and now executive director of the University of Delaware’s Special Initiative on Offshore Wind, said she finds AWEA’s analysis to be more credible because it was compiled using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Jobs and Economic Development Impact modeling tool.

“You can look at the modeling and see which is more objective — the renewable energy laboratory’s modeling is more objective for sure,” she said. “This is a government agency that doesn’t have a bias either way. I think that model can be trusted.”

John Hensley, the American Wind Energy Association’s head of research, said the Georgetown analysis places less value on manufacturing and construction jobs by labeling them as temporary. That obscures the potential for long-term crew employment as wind project development continues, he said. 

In addition, Hensley said, Georgetown’s much lower estimates of operation and maintenance jobs assumes that all maintenance parts will be sourced from abroad. In fact, he said, many domestic manufacturers are capable of providing parts, and the local supply chain will grow as the industry grows. 

Laura Morton, the association’s senior director of policy and regulatory affairs, said they are confident that offshore wind development can be compatible with the interests of commercial fisheries. However, she added, assertions that the emerging offshore wind industry is “not delivering economic prosperity” are “misleading and counterproductive.”

Burdock said much more training and education is needed to “help the local supply chain identify where they fit into the offshore wind industry.” Her organization has developed an 18-hour training program for companies that explains the phases of wind farm development, as well as the component parts and operations.

A wide spectrum of job training is also imperative, in areas like welding, logistics, and vessel operation, she said. 

“I think the states are trying to get their hands wrapped around it,” she said. 

Scott Jensen, director of Rhode Island’s Department of Labor and Training, said they are prepared to begin job training “the second” that projects begin to move.

“The big holdup is the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management at the moment,” Jensen said, referring to the delayed decision on Vineyard Wind. “We’re waiting to get going with significant trades training in conjunction with the building trades unions and Ørsted to make sure we can ramp up quickly for them to get the skilled tradespeople that are going to be necessary.” 

Fishing industry group casts doubt on offshore wind’s job creation promises is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

A new program led by organizers in Indiana offers solar installation and energy efficiency training in marginalized communities. 

As the solar industry continues to grow, advocates want to ensure that job opportunities are accessible for Black people, who remain underrepresented in the sector. 

In Indiana’s coal country, a new program aims to create a “black to green” pipeline, recognizing the disproportionate burden that fossil fuels have placed on Black communities.

The Power Up Solar and Jobs Program, administered by the Indiana State Conference of the NAACP and the Evansville Vicinity Branch, provides instruction and hands-on training in solar panel installation. It is targeted toward unemployed and underemployed workers, as well as formerly incarcerated individuals and young adults between the ages of 18 and 25. 

In an interview with the Energy News Network, Denise Abdul-Rahman, a climate justice organizer for the NAACP, explained how smart grid technology and clean energy jobs training fit within the mission of the Evansville NAACP by providing opportunities for local residents.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What need do you see for providing smart grid job opportunities to the African American community in the Evansville area?  

A: Our aim is to create a just transition, or a “black to green” pipeline. Jobs in the solar industry prior to the pandemic were growing [tremendously]. 

Q: How was the Power Up program established in Evansville?

A:  The Power Up program originated with Rosemary Lytle [president of the NAACP’s Colorado/Montana/Wyoming chapter and executive director of Positive Impact Colorado]. When she first launched her Power Up it was with formerly incarcerated, or what we call returning citizens. So that was the model she did. They launched solar on a particular facility there, and then our national office launched solar both in Los Angeles and Compton. One of those models was put on the Genesis Center, which was a center that had domestic violence survivors. And domestic violence survivors were trained on how to build solar. And another model that is in the midst of being launched is in Laredo, Texas.

With the Evansville model, we had conversations with the Midwest Renewable Energy Association. We said, “Hey, you’ve got this online version [of a training program]. How about you customize it for the NAACP by way of giving us a special portal?” So we have a special NAACP portal. We said we want to make it culturally relatable and culturally grounded for our communities. Right now, it’s free because we have it funded with our partners. 

Q: How are candidates identified for the Power Up program?

A: People were identified through our local branch on the ground with [Evansville NAACP president] Rev. Gerald Arnold. He’s connected to the community and he’s already a servant leader, a missionary in the community. Our second cohort is expected to start on Oct. 8 and a third cohort with statewide outreach should begin shortly after. We will have Zoom meetings with our identified cohort where we share everything around the climate changing and clean energy.

Q: What kind of training did the cohort receive?

A: They were given six hours of hands-on training, in a solar demonstration house where we brought in a trainer from Bloomington. Each unit had 10 online modules each and there were two units, so it worked out to 20 modules. And they will now have the opportunity to start 16-hour virtual classroom or hands-on training that will lead them to get a solar certification. They can also go to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), which offered them the opportunity to apply for apprenticeship.

If for some reason they weren’t able to do that, they could become helpers on a project, or they could become what we call an indentured apprentice. So they can become certified, then get their apprenticeship and then be ready to do the large utility-scale projects with IBEW in Evansville. Or go off to another area that’s not certified and start building. Our local grant was willing to help them gain employment with other opportunities.

With this next cohort, we’re going to expand our offerings in energy efficiency training.  

Q: How many people are in the first cohort and how many people are you looking for in the second cohort?

A: Right now, we are the Little Engine That Could, plus we’re in a pandemic. We weren’t really trying to have large groups for the hands-on [training]. Initially we had eight or nine identified, and seven of them actually registered. Four of them completed the training within the timeframe that we billed, which was two to three weeks, very rigorous. Many of them had construction backgrounds, and one of them had a welding background. And so they easily understood this information. It was like transferable skills. I was extremely impressed.

For the next group, like I said, it’s going to include energy efficiency and energy. Right now we have about seven more identified for the next cohort. Some people that registered, we told them to wait till the next cohort. For our next project, we will have folks from Hammond and Evansville. Because we are in the Zoom technology world, we can have people across the state join in. So we’ll do more intentional marketing, to let everyone that wants to participate be able to participate.

Q: How has the coronavirus pandemic impacted your program?

A:  When it comes to the hands-on training, we’ll have to look at a different strategy around that. The only model that we really have that has the nice little demo house with the solar panels on it, an inverter box and the box in the building is in Evansville. With social distancing, we don’t want to have more than four or six. We’ll have to see how we can creatively figure that out. That hands-on [training] was extremely important. You know, after you read all those chapters, and then to touch and feel and see how it all comes together.

Q: Besides COVID-19, what other challenges have you faced with the training program?

A: We had to mail hard copies [to one trainee]. We did have that as a backup. Another person was so determined; he was taking quizzes and reading assignments on the app. We were hoping the library could be a backup. The library access was limited from 11 a.m. to three o’clock and they only had 10 computers. One of the people that did not finish was having computer problems. He was trying to go to the library, I believe, and I don’t think he asked for access to the hard copies. We would like to identify a technology partner that may be willing to provide laptops to people. We know that we’ll be looking and reaching out for that as we go along.

Q: You mentioned the “black to green” pipeline earlier. Could you say more about that?

A: Oh, that’s a term I have to credit to the national office and to our director Jacqueline Patterson. That just goes to the fact that there’s all these clean energy jobs and we only hold [a small percentage] of them. But yet, the BIPOC [Black, Indigeonous, People of Color] community hosts all the pollution of the polluting systems. So how can we get a just transition? How can we get a just transition for our communities, and the jobs of course. 

The other part is everything from bringing it early into our children’s schools, putting it into our communities so people can visually see it and learn it. To access that black-green pipeline, and also creating these apprenticeships and internship opportunities. The black-green pipeline is inclusive of “How many energy efficiency jobs can we create?”

Q: You mentioned that you were impressed by the transferable skills of people in the program. Could you discuss that further, as well as possible hurdles in transitioning to clean energy jobs?

A:  Brad Morton of Morton Solar talks about how his family, his father, I believe, was a coal miner. How he then started a solar company. He was rooted in how that was our original system and form of energy. Certainly we want coal workers to transition from coal. We want them to see the opportunity in clean energy. We think that their skills obviously could be transferable.

We have to change all of our broken systems. We have to bring everyone forward — create the new and stop the bad. Even though it has served the coal miners for many years as far as feeding their families. For the risks that they’ve had to take and the sacrifice for the rest of us to be able to turn the lights on is a major sacrifice. It’s unfair and they should be afforded a just transition and access to clean energy jobs and other opportunities. We’ve created a model that may be quite easy for them to do.

Q&A: NAACP climate justice organizer on ‘black to green’ employment pipeline is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

As North Carolina seeks to jumpstart its economy, we should do it thoughtfully, focusing on industries with the greatest potential for growth, offering higher-paying jobs and improving the health and well-being of our citizens. There are few industries that fit this bill better than solar energy. 

The growth in the solar energy sector has been enormous in recent years, as state governments and investors alike see that solar will play a larger and larger role in how the nation meets its energy needs in the years to come. This is leading to greater investment and more jobs. Since 2010, solar employment has grown 167% nationwide, with an increase of 23% last year alone. North Carolina is a leader in the market, second only to California in the amount of cumulative installed solar, with over 6,000 of our residents working in the space. 

Other states are quickly catching up. While we were the primary market for solar energy in the Southeast for years, the falling price of solar nationwide and a less favorable policy environment in North Carolina has changed the competitive playing field, leading to a surge in new facilities across our borders in almost every direction. The jobs have flowed with it — since 2018, North Carolina has seen a decline in solar jobs. 

We need to shift our policy environment so that we can once again take a leading role in a market that will only become larger in the years to come. The jobs in this sector are worth the investment. Nationwide, median wages for entry- to senior-level installers and production workers in solar energy range from $15.00 to $36.50 per hour — two to five times greater than North Carolina’s minimum wage. 

Investing in solar energy not only makes economic sense, however. It makes even more sense as a matter of public health policy. Communities with prolonged exposure to air pollution face higher levels of death from COVID-19. Air pollution from tiny particles — or soot — is associated with heart attacks, strokes, premature deaths and a higher death rate overall. These tiny soot particles are created by the combustion of coal and natural gas. 

Here in North Carolina, we produce more than 50% of our electricity from coal and natural gas, ten times that from solar energy. Given the health risks involved, and the fact that we could choose a different energy mix, there is no possible justification for those numbers. With the energy sector being one of the most significant sources of the pollution that is worsening climate change, now is the time to course-correct and double down on our commitment to clean energy. 

Years ago, North Carolina made a big bet on renewables and surged to prominence as a national leader in solar and a hub of clean energy innovation. The clean energy business community has a track record of being a growth engine for our economy and jobs market. As we look ahead, solar energy can once again be a strong element of a robust and sustained economic recovery plan for our state. 

Elizabeth Sasser is a professor of energy policy at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and previously served as a policy advisor on environmental and energy issues at the U.S. Department of Energy. 

Commentary: Unfavorable solar policies drive investment, jobs out of N.C. Let’s turn that around is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The coronavirus pandemic has hammered healthcare systems for rural populations already struggling with the loss of coal jobs and health coverage.

“Transition in Coal Country” is a collaboration of the Energy News Network and WyoFile, made possible by a grant from the Just Transition Fund. The series, reported by Mason Adams and Dustin Bleizeffer, examines how the declining coal industry presents immediate and long-term changes for coal communities in Wyoming and Appalachia, how those communities are coping with change, and what they might learn from each other in charting a path to a sustainable future beyond coal.

Read the rest of the series:
Part one: What’s next for coal country?
Part two: Coal country faces a healthcare crisis
Part three: Coal communities increasingly rely on federal health programs
Part four: How lax fiscal policy has left states flat-footed as mining declines
Part five: Coal country envisions paths forward in manufacturing, reclamation and renewables

Even before the coronavirus pandemic hit, the only hospital serving a vast swath of Wyoming’s coal country was in financial trouble.

Gillette-based Campbell County Health’s revenue began to slip after a 2016 downturn in coal, marked by hundreds of layoffs at Powder River Basin mines in northeast Wyoming. The sprawling complex of surface mines produces nearly 40% of the nation’s coal. 

A series of coal company bankruptcies followed, along with more layoffs. Campbell County Health Chief Operating Officer Colleen Heeter said the community began losing healthcare workers because they moved away with spouses who were let go from the mines.

A “ransom” cyber attack hit the hospital in September 2019, arresting its operations for two weeks — costing it an estimated $2 million to $3 million. Then COVID-19 struck, causing patients to put off visits and elective procedures — sapping 50% of the hospital’s revenue. 

More layoffs and furloughs at the mines followed, on top of hundreds of jobs that suddenly disappeared in Powder River Basin oil fields. Energy analysts warn the worst is yet to come; they predict some mines in the region might close within the year.

“We know we have to make some changes as it relates to the new normal,” Heeter said. 

The coal industry’s outsized influence on local healthcare plays out in coal communities across the nation, which tend to be located in rural areas where providing a full slate of healthcare services was a struggle long before coal’s backslide and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

While healthcare providers are struggling in rural communities across the country, the situation at Campbell County Health illustrates the compounding economic crises of the coronavirus pandemic and a historic downturn in coal — forces that strike particularly hard for coal communities in both central Appalachia and Wyoming. 

Hospitals in both regions have long struggled with aspects of their rural circumstances: chronic health conditions, aging populations and too few people to pay for the increasing costs of healthcare. Rural coal communities that had enjoyed a patient base with a moderate level of private insurance are seeing more patients rely on Medicaid and Medicare. They’re also seeing an alarming increase in uncompensated care.

Nationally, “the average rural hospital has a 4% operating margin, and most of that margin comes from services provided to people with private insurance,” said Beth O’Connor, executive director of the Virginia Rural Health Association. “If you take those services away, nothing else is paying the bills. I would be amazed if everybody survives.”

There have been 12 closures among rural U.S. hospitals so far this year, according to the University of North Carolina’s Rural Health Research Program. The number is likely to grow substantially before year’s end.

“Everybody is scrambling,” said Debrin Jenkins, executive director of the West Virginia Rural Health Association. “These hospitals were already running in the red even before this.”

Hospitals in coal country at the breaking point

Two hospitals have closed this year in West Virginia, and a third is set to shutter by the end of July, all in coal-producing counties. Fairmont Regional Medical Center in Marion County closed in mid-March, and Williamson Memorial Hospital in Mingo County closed in April. More hospital closures are likely to follow.

Hospitals in coal country were structured to rely on a steady tax base from the industry, as well as good-paying jobs that provide health benefits to employees and their families. The permanent losses in coal, along with its effects on ancillary businesses, have destabilized the existing system of how healthcare is paid for and delivered. It’s a monumental challenge for rural coal communities, and an essential component of a community’s chances of survival beyond coal.

Robust healthcare services are as crucial as housing, roads, water and schools if any rural community is to survive, let alone reinvent itself after the loss of a legacy industry that paid most of the bills. Yet coal’s decline has undercut the ability of local businesses and governments to invest in maintaining those assets.

“It’s the perfect storm for those communities,” said Eric Boley, president of the Wyoming Hospital Association and previously administrator at South Lincoln Medical Center in Kemmerer. “Even prior to COVID-19, the downturn in coal had a really detrimental impact on the communities in a lot of different ways.”

For decades, the coal town of Kemmerer, Wyoming, has relied on the Naughton power plant, associated coal mine and a pair of natural gas processing plants to boost local revenue and help financially support healthcare. One of the three coal-burning units at Naughton powered down in 2019; another will go offline in 2025 while the third is converted to natural gas — actions that will cost hundreds of jobs at the power plant and the Kemmerer Mine.

Rock Springs, Glenrock, Gillette and other Wyoming energy towns faced similar circumstances before the COVID-19 pandemic hammered coal and the oil and gas industries.

“Now, you’ve got hospitals that are literally hemorrhaging [money] because they’ve stopped all of the [elective] procedures and all of the things that actually bring revenue into their hospitals,” Boley said in April. “COVID-19 has just had a total catastrophic impact on healthcare in our state.”

Even as medical providers lean on telehealth technology, many of their patients have poor cell service and worse internet. O’Connor said that one southwestern Virginia hospital still relies on film mammography because it doesn’t have the broadband capacity for a digital machine.

At the same time, coal’s decline continues to sap revenue for hospitals. For example, a portion of Campbell County Health’s funding comes from a mill levy based on property taxes; the healthier the local economy, the more money it generates for the hospital. The county’s three mills dedicated to the hospital generated $18 million three years ago — barely enough to cover the hospital’s annual uncompensated care, CCH’s Heeter said. Now, thanks to the downturn in coal and oil, those same three mills will deliver about $11.2 million in 2020.

That budget-altering challenge is still trending downward.

Some Wyoming hospitals reported losing up to 70% of revenue one month into the pandemic, Boley said. Approximately 1,539 people had lost their jobs in the healthcare and social services sectors in Wyoming from mid-March to the end of April and were receiving unemployment benefits, according to the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services. That doesn’t account for healthcare staff who moved out of the community after their spouses were laid off from coal and oil jobs. 

Like many hospitals across the nation, Campbell County Health is desperately trying to stem the loss of healthcare professionals by imposing pay cuts and furloughs before turning to layoffs.

“Things are only going to get worse,” Boley said in April. “If things don’t turn around quickly, I have some serious concerns about whether or not a lot of our hospitals will even survive this. And I’m not being dramatic — I’m being realistic when I take a look at the amount of cash they’re burning to try to stay open and trying to keep their communities protected. We’ve got some tough times ahead of us.” 

By mid-May, Wyoming hospitals and healthcare providers had received two injections of CARES Act relief funds totaling about $139 million, a lifeline that likely prevented one or more hospital closures — for now, Boley said. Uncompensated care is accelerating and hospitals are simply trying to emerge from the pandemic intact. 

Many Wyoming hospitals resumed non-emergency procedures after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services revised its COVID-19 guidelines on April 19. Central Appalachian hospitals resumed in late April and early May. However, hospitals everywhere are still limited in the number of non-emergency procedures they can take on due to continuing protective measures for COVID-19 — and many people continue to put off seeking care from fear they may be exposed to the virus. 

Reacting to a pandemic in a coal crisis

Congress included $100 billion for hospitals in the $2 trillion CARES Act, which has staunched some of the fiscal bleeding. But rural hospital leaders say the relief was just a bandage.

“There’s not enough money that Congress can print to underwrite the cost of all of this,” said Ballad Health CEO Alan Levine. “The faster we get our operations back up, the faster we get back to financial stability.”

Ballad Health is Southwest Virginia’s dominant hospital chain. The nonprofit, which also covers northeast Tennessee, formed through the merger of two previously competing nonprofit chains that were both losing millions of dollars. Virginia did not expand Medicaid until 2019, after two hospitals had closed. Tennessee, which still hasn’t expanded Medicaid, has seen 13 hospital closures since 2000.

Ballad received $38 million from the CARES Act, but “$38 million doesn’t make up for more than $100 million in terms of cash flow that we’ve lost … from where we were a year ago,” Levine said. Additionally, Ballad received a $200 million advance on Medicare that it must pay back. 

The hospital chain should manage through the fall, Levine said, but the future is still hazy because of uncertainty about how the pandemic will play out.

“Only 17% of our in-patient revenue is covered by commercial insurance, 60% Medicare and 15% is Medicaid,” Levine said. “If there’s a small reduction in the number of people covered by insurance, or an increase in the number of people who have high deductibles, all of that could have a major effect financially on the system. We’re watching all of that in terms of our cash flow.”

The closure of a clinic or hospital creates an economic ripple that has an outsized effect on rural places that already lack large pools of employers.

“For most rural communities, the hospital is one of the top three employers; usually the school district and hospital are one and two,” O’Connor said. “If you take that hospital away, not only are you losing individual jobs, but those are good-paying jobs — doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists and whatnot — good jobs with good benefits paying a lot into the tax base of a community.” 

Suppliers and other support businesses also take a hit, as well as restaurants and retail establishments that benefit from having doctors, nurses and other medical personnel as customers.

The problems afflicting coal country’s hospitals began well before the pandemic, and relief money from the CARES Act and other sources will, at best, keep them going only for the short-term. More comprehensive solutions remain elusive, especially given the political gridlock in Washington, D.C., and the limitations of state funding support.

Meanwhile, healthcare systems are bracing for more waves of coronavirus — whether as states begin to reopen, or when cold weather returns.

“I don’t think we’ve hit that tipping point yet so far as seeing these infections,” said Jenkins, of the West Virginia Rural Health Association. “We really don’t know how many people are sick, especially in these very rural communities that nobody is going to. I think the infection will really step up if people don’t social distance. When things open up, I think we’ll see a spike, but I think we’ll see a huge spike this fall.”

Coal country faces a healthcare crisis is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

As the coronavirus spread, Appalachian Ohio saw the state’s highest percentages of people out of work.

Ohio’s coal mining counties have been hit even harder as unemployment surged following the country’s coronavirus outbreak.

As the statewide unemployment rate moved from 4.7% in February to 5.6% in March, counties in Appalachian Ohio also saw rates twice as high — up to 12.2% in Monroe County. The six counties with the highest percentages of people out of work in March were all in the state’s Appalachian region. 

Job security has been an ongoing concern for coal miners and their communities, and the coronavirus pandemic has made matters worse. As of April, the U.S. coal industry had lost one in seven jobs since January, when doctors diagnosed the first U.S. case of COVID-19.

“Anywhere in the country where the economy was already struggling or in free fall, like in coal country, the pandemic is only making things worse,” said economist Jon Erickson at the University of Vermont, where his research focuses on resilience. Unlike other job sectors, “there’s no option to work from home.”

A shrinking market

U.S. coal production last year was already down nearly 30% from just five years earlier in 2014, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data. The EIA’s short-term energy outlook released April 7 forecasts that U.S. coal production this year will fall another 22% percent from last year.

“Lower production reflects declining demand for coal in the electric power sector, lower demand for U.S. exports, and a number of coal mines that have been idled for extended periods as a result of COVID-19,” the EIA report said. 

The industry has struggled to compete with natural gas from fracking. Meanwhile, the levelized cost of new solar or wind generation is now cheaper than the marginal cost to keep most coal-fired power plants running, according to a 2019 analysis by Energy Innovation & Technology and Vibrant Clean Energy.

Job losses have continued. CCU Coal and Construction cut more than 200 jobs in eastern and southeastern Ohio last year after American Electric Power decided to close its Conesville plant in Coshocton County. 

More U.S. coal miners have been out of work, at least temporarily, since the COVID-19 crisis began. All or part of five mines in Virginia announced shutdowns because of the virus at the end of March, indicating they would fill existing orders from stockpiles. Around that time, Consol Energy shut down a mine in West Virginia after workers came down with the virus.

“It’s almost every day somebody calls us and says, ‘We’re shutting down for three weeks,’” Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mines Safety and Health David Zatezalo said during a stakeholder call last month. The U.S. Mines Safety and Health Administration even keeps a list of shut-down coal mines, although that list wasn’t publicly available as of last month, S&P Global reported.

Impacts on communities

“There’s a whole downstream impact” when mines or coal-fired power plants close, said Neil Waggoner, Ohio representative for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. The 2018 closings of the J.M. Stuart and Killen coal-fired power plants in Adams County, Ohio, are “emblematic,” he said. 

AES’s decision to close the plants led to a loss of not only the 370 direct jobs at those plants, but also to the equivalent of about 760 additional full-time jobs in other industries, Ohio University policy analyst Gilbert Michaud and colleagues reported last year in the academic journal Regional Science Policy & Practice. More than 70% of the $8.5 million in lost local government tax revenues would have gone to schools and children’s services, according to the team’s estimates.

Job losses also mean fewer opportunities in communities that have long depended primarily on mining and drilling. Bev Reed is a sales associate and mechanic at the Bridgeport, Ohio, bike shop her parents opened in 1973. The town is in Belmont County, which has a long history of coal mining and is now part of Ohio’s shale gas region. In some places rivulets of water run yellow, due to acid mine drainage, she noted. Beyond that, Reed said, many of her contemporaries who also went to college have since moved away.

“A lot of the population here in the county is middle-aged and older,” she said, noting that many young people search for jobs elsewhere. “No one stays hardly. There’s really not much opportunity if you want a good-paying job.”

“The state legislature has done nothing to help these communities or to prepare these communities,” said Waggoner. “It’s like they’ve” — lawmakers — “had their head in the sand while the world has moved beyond them. And we’ve only seen plant retirements speeding up and the economics of coal plants getting worse.”

Bailouts like Ohio House Bill 6 won’t do much to help workers in the long term, Waggoner said, despite the law’s short-term subsidies for two 1950s-era coal-fired power plants. In his view, there must be “real supports to the communities to provide a future for them beyond coal and coal plants.”

Seeking solutions

To be sure, the pandemic is “intensifying preexisting problems and making them worse” across a wide range of sectors, said political scientist Anthony DiMaggio at Lehigh University. But it also seems to be sparking widespread support for addressing social justice problems as the country emerges from the crisis. 

More than three-fourths of those answering a nationwide survey by the Harris Poll for the university felt it was very important or somewhat important for the U.S. government to commit to reducing inequality. The results of the April 2020 poll didn’t break out the data for rural locales. However, “the support for government taking action is so widespread, you’d have to say it would include people in those areas,” DiMaggio said.

“So the question for the [COVID-19] stimulus is how do we invest away from a dying industry and toward the industries of the 21st century,” Erickson said. “And most importantly, how do we do this in a way that doesn’t leave rural America, like coal country, behind?”

“We’ve invested in everything except resilience,” Erickson continued. For a community, that means it can “take a hit, that it can take a shot, and come back stronger than ever.”

Support for people in Ohio’s coal country could take a variety of forms, Waggoner said, such as jobs training or supporting new generation or manufacturing for the renewable sector. Basic infrastructure is also crucial to make rural areas more attractive to other employers, he said. High-speed internet isn’t available in many parts of rural Ohio, for example. 

Just as the 1936 Rural Electrification Act provided a major stimulus during the Great Depression of the last century, “we now need a 21st century renewable rural electrification program,” Erickson said. Details would need to be worked out, he said, but would likely include major investments supported by public policy actions, to encourage clean energy job growth in rural areas.

Even as the Energy Information Administration forecasts that total U.S. electricity generation will fall by 3% this year, the agency expects 11% growth in renewable generation this year. That’s an optimistic outlook, even after the agency’s downward adjustments of 5% and 10% from its previous estimates this spring.

The southwestern counties in Ohio’s Appalachian region offer relatively good solar resources compared to many other parts of the PJM grid region, Michaud noted. Several projects are already planned for the area.

The next steps will depend on what policymakers, community leaders and voters do in the coming months. Erickson feels people impacted by coal’s decline should “organize, organize, organize” to demand meaningful help and hold government leaders accountable.

“To build more resilient rural communities, we need to create a new energy ownership economy, where rural communities can take part,” he said.

In Ohio’s coal country, pandemic pushes unemployment rate from bad to worse is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.