"We have just in Pennsylvania alone, 300 years worth of coal sitting in the ground that we aren't really utilizing now because of concern for the environment, and it's a legitimate concern, but one that we can overcome, " Santorum said.
As we continue to think greener and smarter, we'll see new possibilities, like the long-term power-generating potential of an intact Appalachian mountaintop with wind turbines vs. chopping it to pieces for a few years' worth of burnable coal and centuries of environmental devastation.
The deal includes 118 million tons of coal reserves, enough for 20 years of production, as well as a skilled workforce and state-of-the-art coal preparation and loadout facilities.
In its heyday, during the productive coal mining years of the 1920s, the town boasted nearly 30, 000 residents.
CNN: Behind the scenes: An interview interrupted in Shenandoah
In just eight years, coal's share of the U.S. electricity market has tumbled from one-half to one third -- and still falling.
Over the past three years, China has added 200 gigiwatts of coal-fired electric power capacity--equivalent to 20% of the entire installed capacity of the United States.
"The S.S. Badger, the filthiest ship on the Great Lakes, has been given two more years to dump hundreds of tons of dangerous coal ash into Lake Michigan, " Durbin said in a statement.
Analysts at ICAP Shipping Research in London shrug off the idea that there will be a glut, since shipments of cheap Australian coal and iron ore to China have for years been constrained by a lack of big ships.
They were still a new denomination then, but had spread rapidly in the last fifty years around a nation of exploited factory workers, coal miners, and rural and inner-city poor.
Which makes sense, considering that it's the stuff that coal is made of (lignite coal is soft brown coal formed from geologic pressures on forests that died millions of years ago).
Forbes energy blogger Robert Rapier wrote about the potential of coal-derived ethanol a few years ago.
Peabody International is my only holding, a play on buoyant metallurgical coal prices the next couple of years.
Europe, the region that likes to think of itself as perhaps the greenest in the world, has also seen a return to coal in the last couple of years.
BBC: Green energy on the back foot after carbon trading blow
Less than 2o years ago, electric generation was primarily the domain of oil, coal, and nuclear plants.
FORBES: Electricity and Gas Markets Are Out Of Synch: Sooner or Later, This Will Hurt Us
You want to see the price of natural gas rise significantly over the years, replace all coal, all nuclear over the next 20 or 30 years with natural gas.
WSJ: Dominion Resources Chief Seeks Coordinated U.S. Energy Policy
Social Security was designed to give a few years of modest benefits to people whose bodies were worn out through coal mining, factory work and other physically demanding labor.
Howard Herzog of the MIT Energy Initiative points out that even when the technology is perfected it will take years to build up the capacity to construct large numbers of clean coal plants.
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His father, Arthur Jenkins, worked in the coal mines from the age of 12 for 24 years with a two-year break at Ruskin, an Oxford college for working people, and in 1935 became a Labour member of Parliament.
Workers also unfurled a "National Union of Mineworkers" banner, evoking memories of the painful yearlong coal miners' strike during the Thatcher years.
Power giant Drax plans to burn huge amounts of wood instead of coal at its North Yorkshire plant over the next few years.
During his two and a half years running Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) on the northern coast of KwaZulu Natal, Mr Dlamini has done much to improve tense relations with the government and the state-owned rail company that brings coal to the terminal.
Politicians like New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer have embraced clean coal as fundamental to their energy policy, but even clean coal plants will take five to ten years to have much of an impact on the environment by reducing the level of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere.
During the past three years, we have secured the retirement of a staggering 50, 000 megawatts of coal.
Recent years have brought change to the area s traditional industry, with the decline of coal and brick-making.
Already, in the past 15 years, Indonesia's coal exports have grown at a compound annual rate of 15%.
Moreover, in recent years it has forayed into the coal business and is today a significant producer of metallurgical coal.
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The firm is also drawing up details how it would extract coal from the site over a period of three to five years.
And, Minnesota Power, a division of Allete, said this year that it would shut down two coal plants in the northern part of the state within two years.
The Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, which began a little more than 10 years ago in response to the Bush administration's plan to build hundreds of coal-fired power plants, has successfully opposed the vast majority of proposed new plants and helped to retire 130 of the dirtiest, most-polluting existing coal plants in the United States.
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