By Hank Hayes

May 22, 2017 - What a difference a presidential election makes.

The annual meeting of the Virginia Coal and Energy Alliance (VCEA) and Southern States Energy Board at the MeadowView Marriott in recent years ended up being a rant against the former administration of Democrat President Barack Obama and his perceived war on coal.

“The Obama Administration added 81,700 pages of new regulations in 2015,” Murray Energy Corp. Chairman, President and CEO Robert Murray told VCEA at last year’s meeting. “Rules from the Obama Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) alone now total over 25 million words, 38 times more than those in our Holy Bible.”

With the takeover of the White House by Republican President Donald Trump, the theme of this year’s VCEA meeting is “Coal: Launching A New Era.” The meeting begins today.

VCEA President Harry Childress expressed confidence in Trump’s administration in a phone interview last December.

“(Trump) verbally has said he supports coal, that he’ll do what he can to get coal back on its feet,” Childress said. “That’s going to take some time, but we feel he’ll remove the federal government from playing into the market. We know we have a tough competition from cheap natural gas. We know that some of coal’s ups and downs have been market driven, but give us a chance to compete. The federal regulations have put us more at a disadvantage.”

Trump has signed an executive order to roll back those federal regulations, including enacting a review of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which is viewed as the foundation of the Obama Administration’s global warming legacy.

Still, media outlets like The Washington Post have published stories suggesting that Trump can’t make coal great again because a number of companies are focusing on their environmental footprint and cutting back on coal use. Kingsport-based Eastman Chemical Co., for instance, has chosen to continue switching out its power boilers from coal to natural gas with a goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.

Murray, at last year’s VCEA meeting, noted that prior to Obama, 52 percent of America’s electricity was generated from coal. In 2016, said Murray, coal-fired electricity moved to 32 percent. “We predict that it will decline to less than 30 percent of our power generation by the early 2020s,” he projected.

Trump, at a campaign rally held in Abingdon last summer, pledged to help the coal industry get back on its feet. He was invited to speak at this year’s VCEA meeting.

“The U.S. has lost nearly 200,000 mining jobs since 2014,” Trump noted at the rally. “ ... (Former Democrat opponent) Hillary Clinton will be worse than Obama (on coal).”

Other confirmed speakers at the VCEA meeting will include Republican U.S. Reps. Phil Roe of Northeast Tennessee and Morgan Griffith of Southwest Virginia. Both are coal advocates who have been critical of Obama’s policies. There is also a scheduled business session on clean coal policies and technologies.

Murray pointed out last year there were about 50 bankrupt coal companies in the United States. One of those coal companies, Kingsport-based Alpha Natural Resources, emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 2016.

The Wall Street Journal described Murray as the “last man” betting on coal.

“Well, I am obviously not giving up,” Murray told VCEA last year. “Nor should you. We have the law, science, economics, cold hard energy facts and the Constitution on our side. Our cause is right. It is right for our industries, communities and America. We must use these realities to fight our opponents’ intent in destroying coal and our wonderful electric power grid.”

VCEA, headquartered in Lebanon, Va., was formed in 2014 and combined the efforts of three organizations into one central organization focused in three areas of primary interest, including governmental affairs, regulatory affairs and education and outreach.