Congressman David McKinley is determined to convince members of Congress that fossil fuels, especially coal, are essential to secure the U.S. electricity grid from blackouts.
But McKinley, a West Virginia Republican and chairman of the Congressional Coal Caucus, doesn’t feel like he’s making much progress, especially with his Democratic colleagues — many of whom want to phase out coal entirely. Federal policies also still don’t reflect the national security and grid resilience value McKinley says coal brings to the table.
“I feel like I keep shouting from the rooftops,” McKinley told the Washington Examiner in a recent interview. “It just falls on deaf ears.”
Coal power is continuing to decline sharply in the United States, reaching its lowest levels in more than four decades in 2019, according to recent data from the Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the Energy Department.
The coronavirus pandemic is deepening coal’s struggles. America’s Power, which lobbies for coal-fired electricity generators, estimated that just in March, coal-fired power fell nearly 42% in the mid-Atlantic and Midwest power markets, which have the two largest coal fleets in the country.
In part because of the pandemic, the EIA now projects that in 2020, the U.S. will produce more power from renewable energy than coal for the first time on record.
McKinley, 73, says there’s more Congress and the Trump administration can be doing to help coal — both as part of pandemic relief and more broadly to help the resource find better footing in the market.
For example, the West Virginia congressman said he and other Republican colleagues have drafted a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to ensure that companies undergoing bankruptcy proceedings won’t be shut out of coronavirus-related lending programs.
Overall, McKinley said President Trump has done a lot by way of regulatory rollbacks to help coal producers. Even so, that hasn’t boosted coal generation.
That’s because “the producers are the tail of the dog,” the congressman said. “We’ve got to make sure our coal generators have some relief.”
McKinley said Energy Department officials have told him they are in “serious conversations and negotiation” with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and grid operators in the mid-Atlantic and Midwest “to try to find a way to be able to keep our fossil fuel industry, particularly coal, from premature early retirements.”
The Energy Department, toward the beginning of the Trump administration, floated attempts to boost coal in energy markets, but the FERC ultimately rejected the agency’s bid to subsidize coal and nuclear power and punted the issue to regional grid operators.
McKinley, who has represented West Virginia’s 1st District since 2011, is a native of the state and one of just two engineers in Congress. The Energy Department’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, a hub of carbon capture and fossil fuel research, has operations in his district, in Morgantown.
But even as he is adamant that there’s a future for coal-fired power in the U.S., McKinley isn’t opposed to the concept of legislation to address climate change. He said he views climate policy through a practical engineering lens.
The West Virginia Republican is teaming up with a Democratic colleague, Oregon congressman Kurt Schrader, to craft a sweeping bipartisan climate plan. The two lawmakers announced their effort earlier this year. McKinley said he’s currently working with Schrader and his staff on “the fundamentals of a discussion draft,” though their plan to introduce the bill has been pushed back by a few months because of the pandemic.
Their plan is to “innovate first, regulate later,” McKinley said. The draft legislation would put “serious money” into research for low-carbon technologies like carbon capture and storage, allowing a decade of private sector and public sector investments to help commercialize the technologies, he said.
After that, emissions regulations would kick in that “match up with our technological capabilities,” McKinley added.
McKinley is pushing support for carbon capture on other fronts too, including as part of coronavirus recovery efforts. He and Texas Democratic congressman Marc Veasey wrote a May 4 letter to congressional leadership calling for a number of policies to boost carbon capture, including extensions of deadlines for federal tax incentives and additional funding at the Energy Department to support projects that are under development.
McKinley, though, isn’t optimistic that carbon capture will make it into the latest round of relief.
Right now, the process is too political, as Democrats push a bill they know won’t get anywhere in the Senate, he said. House Democrats released a $3 trillion relief package May 12 that’s devoid of any energy-specific provisions, even to support renewable energy.
McKinley questions whether wind and solar energy need extensions on their tax credits. He noted renewable energy supporters say wind and solar are getting cheaper and can compete in energy markets even without the federal incentives.
“After 20 years of providing subsidies, don’t you think it’s a reasonable time frame to say we’re going to stop them?” McKinley said. “I thought there was a phase down, but I haven’t seen the impact of that yet.”
To take advantage of the wind production tax credit, projects must be online by the end of 2020. The solar investment tax credit phases out over the next few years.
McKinley said he likely wouldn’t support measures outright that would extend subsidies for renewables. But if those measures were part of a bargain that included robust support for carbon capture, it’s something he’d have to “weigh pretty hard,” he added.
Looking ahead, McKinley said this year is critical for the coal sector. The November election is the “end-all, be-all” for the industry, he said.
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, “has said very clearly fossil fuels, and coal in particular, will have no role in his administration,” McKinley said. He added that people shouldn’t be quick to dismiss that as “just political jargon.”
During the Obama administration, McKinley said, the U.S. lost 456 coal-fired power plants and 86,000 coal-mining and other coal-related jobs.
“So I think we ought to be taking this very seriously when someone says that there’s no role in his administration for the use of fossil fuels,” he said.
