Survival of the Coal Industry

Floor Speech

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Mrs. CAPITO. I thank the gentleman from Ohio for having this Special Order to talk about coal, to talk about energy, to talk about jobs, to talk about quality of life in our States--North Dakota, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia. West Virginia is the second largest coal-producing State in the country, and it is part of who we are--and has been for many, many years.

Living in West Virginia and being home as we were in August, there's a lot of pessimism in the entire State.

It's not just about coal--if you're a coal miner or directly involved--it's the whole community, it's the whole area, it's the whole region. There's a feeling that the President, through his policies, has really picked winners and losers in this country, and our region is going to lose.

The job issue, we're seeing hundreds of jobs--we just had a mine close last week, or a week before, 250 miners. But then that's the transportation, the truck driver, the Stop-and-Go owner, the oil and gas market, the electrician, the pipes, all the things, equipment manufacturers. Everything. It's not just about those 250 jobs, it's a multiplying effect in our region of West Virginia.

The abundance of coal in West Virginia nationwide gives us real potential. We get criticized: Oh, you're fighting an old fight; that fight is no longer part of the future. We've got to make it a part of the future because it makes good sense. Producing more domestic energy means reliable, it means an affordable supply of power and energy.

I think about a State like mine that has a lot of folks who are living on fixed incomes, a lot of older folks. When it comes to the end of the month and they see their electric bill, they're having trouble now meeting that challenge of paying for that, making choices of medicine or food,--food for their pets or whatever is important to them--because of the high cost now. That's just going to go up and up and up if we disenfranchise ourselves in this country, our most abundant resource, and that being coal.

Let's talk about the tax revenues that are lost to all the counties, the school systems in our State. If you don't have the tax revenues in our State that coal produces and energy produces, whether it's natural gas--we've all got a lot of natural gas in our States too, we're blessed with that. But if we don't have the tax revenues there, this just wounds county commissioners, wounds county boards of education.

That to me is not one of the unintended, but one of the consequences that never gets talked about that really will harm a way of life, a future for the children. So let's talk about the potential.

We have been exporting a lot of coal. By doing that, we create jobs because we're exporting our coal. I see nothing wrong with exporting coal to our allies because exporting energy means we're producing the resource.

Earlier this year, Bloomberg News reported that Germany will start up more coal-fired power stations this year than at any time in the past 20 years. When we think about Germany, we think about somebody who's environmentally conscious. They have a very healthy Green Party over there. They're considered to be very cutting edge when it comes to conservation and clean energy, yet they're building more coal-fired power plants in their country than they have over the last 25 years.

During the first campaign, the President said that if you build a coal-fired power plant, we will bankrupt you. We've all seen the tape. On Friday, that's what his statement is going to be from the EPA. It will be impossible to build a new coal-fired power plant or it will bankrupt you if you try to do it.

One of his major advisers has said that a war on coal is exactly what this country needs. How can you say a war on an industry that employs thousands of people in the heartland of our country and thousands more in ancillary businesses, and it's a way of life? It's domestic energy. The administration supports this attack on hardworking people in an industry that provides good jobs and affordable energy. It's affordable energy, not just for our folks on fixed incomes, but for our manufacturers, our small businesses. A cheaper, affordable energy is going to create jobs in other industries, as well, and it has.

You don't have to look too far to see the administration's attack on coal. We know about the EPA's unprecedented action of retroactively pulling a validly issued clean water permit. That was shocking on the face of it. They said, Oh, we've done that before. Well, when you look at it, maybe once, maybe a long time ago, but this was a 10-year process, millions of dollars to get this permit that was yanked out from under this company. Who's going to invest in an industry when you're in danger of losing a permit retroactively after you've jumped through all the hoops, met all the standards, worked with the Corps, done all the things you're supposed to do, and still this administration will come back and take your permit back?

The administration has attacked the use of coal. Recent figures say that 295 coal units across 33 States are closing. They're closing in our States, and we can already see it. It's a source of great concern.

In 2012, the EPA proposed a New Source Performance Standard. They kind of backed off from it, but they placed coal plants and large natural gas plants under the same standard for carbon dioxide emissions, 1,000 pounds per megawatt hour. What we heard from earlier reports is they're going to create two standards, but the standard for coal is going to be unmeetable because the carbon capture and sequestration technology is not there. This is where I think, if we look to the future, where the real future lies for our abundant resource, coal.

But earlier this year they scrapped the 2012 proposal, and the President instructed revised standards. Basically what we're going to see on Friday is the same thing. It's like Groundhog Day: same thing, same rhetoric, same standards, same results. Lost jobs, higher utility costs, seniors and others on fixed incomes worried about how they're going to heat their homes or cool them in the hot summers. All of these things are very daunting in my State of West Virginia.

The truth is that without new performance standards, carbon dioxide emission generation in the United States is falling.

Let's talk about the rest of the world. At the same time, global emissions have increased by 1.4 percent. So if the administration wants to impose carbon dioxide standards, regulations that will harm the American economy, then at a minimum, it should act as part of an agreement with other countries. The Senate unanimously took that position in 1997 when it passed a resolution sponsored by then-Senator Robert C. Byrd from West Virginia and current Obama Secretary Chuck Hagel which said that the United States should not ratify the Kyoto treaty unless specific standards were agreed upon to limit emissions by developing countries.

The Byrd-Hagel principle was common sense in 1997, and it remains so today. For that reason, I will be introducing legislation that would delay the implementation of the new source rules for coal plants unless other countries, that account for 80 percent of the total non-USA carbon dioxide emission standards, enact those standards so that we are not disadvantaging our workers, our jobs, our economy, our seniors, our folks who have manufacturing jobs in small businesses.

The American people want us to work together. They really do. We hear that when we're out. It's Republicans, Democrats, Independents, nonparties, old, young, educated, less educated, blue collar, white collar. They want us to work together. They want commonsense policies. They want an energy policy that creates jobs, that includes everything, that is an all-of-the-above energy plan. That's what we want, and that's what we're fighting for. The President stood up here in January and said he was for all-of-the-above energy. On Friday, he's going to say all of the above except coal, which is abundant in the heartland of America.

I urge my colleagues on the floor tonight to think about coal as I know some States do not realize what their portfolio is in coal. So I looked up Florida. Twenty-two percent of the power generation in Florida is coal, yet you hear many of the Florida delegation right on board with the climate change philosophy of this President. Their renewable portfolio in the Sunshine State is slightly over 2 percent. The renewable portfolio in the State of West Virginia, who has some of the most abundant resources in the country, is at least twice that. It goes back to actually do what you say and say what you do.

So I think that we need to work with our colleagues and educate our colleagues about what a great role coal plays across this country. Even if you don't mine it in your region, you're using it, you're powering it. Your seniors in Florida are using it to cool themselves down on a hot summer day.

With that, I would say I look forward with dread on Friday to see what the new EPA Administrator has come forward with because I feel that it's going to pick winners and losers in this country and that our region, and really our own domestic energy supply and in some ways our domestic energy security, is going to be disadvantaged. That, to me, in a time of high unemployment, in a time of more part-time jobs being created than full-time, we're going to turn our back on an industry that looks to the future to do it better, to do it cleaner, to do it more efficiently, to do it with higher technology, to do it with better research, to do it with education, to employ the next generation in an industry that has been part of the backbone of this country and certainly of our region.

I thank the gentleman for having me.

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