As Coal Mines Close, Displaced Miners Find Work in Renewable Energy Boom::A battery startup in West Virginia and the mineworkers union may have a blueprint for those left behind in the energy transition.
As Coal Mines Close, Displaced Miners Find Work in Renewable Energy Boom::A battery startup in West Virginia and the mineworkers union may have a blueprint for those left behind in the energy transition.
If only. Hillary and Obama both ran on the “All Options On The Table” platform, which mostly meant a transition to natural gas as a cheaper alternative to coal mining.
Relatively recent innovations in wind and solar tech have made these modes of production even more profitable (on a slightly longer time scale) than natty gas. But even then, that’s contingent on regional energy grids set up to receive periodic gluts of wind/solar peak energy. The current fight over US energy policy revolves around where and when we build out new power lines, as their distribution heavily impacts which regions of a state will be the cheapest sources of energy production.
Since these decisions are heavily influenced by lobbyists of the various energy companies, and since Hillary has been in bed with Wall Street banks her entire adult life, her platform has never been particularly green. Its simply been chasing the highest bidder. Sometimes that means going with a Goldman Sachs wind power play. Other times, it means sponsoring an insurgency in Libya in hopes of getting multinationals back in control of their oil fields.
That’s all very true but doesn’t really address what I said. A solid plan for what to do with workers displaced by the transition away from coal (to whatever came after) was always an explicit part of her platform. This NPR article breaks it down.
Your screen name brings this whole conversation to a whole new level…