More bad news for coal. Last week Bloomberg reported U.S. demand for coal has dropped to a 63-year low. This week, NRG Energy announced it’s closing two coal-fired plants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, according to the Patriot-News: NRG announced that it would cease operations at its Titus Station power plant in Cumru Twp., Berks [...]
The boom in production of oil and gas has lead to a decline in the nation’s coal industry, according to Bloomberg: Pain is being felt from Appalachia to Wyoming as the U.S. reduces its dependence on coal to almost the lowest level in 63 years — the cost of the country becoming more energy self- sufficient through [...]
36 American miners died on the job in 2012 – an all-time low, according to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. As the Tribune-Review reports, none of those deaths occurred in Pennsylvania: In Pennsylvania, the mining industry ended 2010 without a fatality for the first time and duplicated the feat in 2012. A surface miner died [...]
Another sign of a contracting market for coal: Pennsylvania-based PBS Coals is idling two mines and laying off 138 employees. The announcement comes five months after PBS laid off a quarter of its workforce. The AP reports on the latest round of PBS layoffs: A company official did not immediately return a call for comment on [...]
StateImpact Pennsylvania’s latest project, BoomTown, documents how natural gas drilling has affected Towanda, Bradford County. Click here to watch and listen to the report. _____ An industry moves into the area, builds up the community’s population and infrastructure, and makes a lot of money for a lot of people as it extracts natural resources. It’s [...]
The analysts at the United States Energy Information Administration released their preliminary annual report on energy use Wednesday afternoon. (The full document won’t come out until early next year.) The forecast aims to predict domestic energy production, use and cost over the next three decades. What’s it say? Here are some highlights from in four easy-to-understand charts. [...]
Greene County is covered in natural gas drilling rigs. But in an odd twist, the Marcellus Shale boom is indirectly putting a dent in a portion of the county’s tax revenue. Here’s why: the domestic shale gas boom — specifically the cheap natural gas prices it’s created — has undercut the coal industry. Coal layoffs [...]
The Post-Gazette examines Pennsylvania’s ongoing shift from coal to natural gas-fired power plants, and raises some questions: According to power industry data, electricity from burning natural gas increased from 12.8 percent of the total generated in June 2011 to 19.1 percent in June 2012, in the PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization that coordinates wholesale [...]
While low natural gas prices are great for consumers, they aren’t necessarily good for the energy industry itself. For example, the pace of natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania slowed down over the past year, as natural gas prices dropped to their lowest level in a decade. Natural gas prices are starting to inch back up, [...]
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tom Smith’s new television ad puts energy policy front and center. The commercial blasts Democrat Bob Casey and the Obama Administration for regulations that, in the ad’s words, have “forced [coal mines] to close.” What the ad doesn’t mention: while new federal regulations certainly have made things harder for the coal [...]
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