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By Reece Ristau
June 25, 2017 - Flipping through the newspaper one day last fall at his home in Rose Hill, Virginia, Jimmy Pittman happened to see an ad for a grant to help retrain displaced coal industry workers.
About a month later, Pittman learned he’d be out of a job in 30 days.
“At my age of 52, there was some worry,” Pittman said of getting laid off.
For 25 years, Pittman worked in the industry, most recently for a subsidiary of Phillips Machine Services, in Farragut, Tennessee, where he fabricated and rebuilt a variety of supplies for underground and strip mines. Last December, Pittman found himself in a situation familiar to many coal industry workers: He needed to make a new plan.
Coal production and employment numbers continue to decline in Virginia. Between 2007 and 2016, annual tonnage in Virginia dropped by about 50 percent, according to data from the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy.
In the same span, the number of workers reported by the DMME dropped from 4,300 to 2,800.
The DMME does not officially track producing coal mines, according to spokesperson Tarah Kesterson, but officials estimate that coal is being mined at about 50 mines in Virginia.
Those in the industry remain optimistic about the future of coal.
Harry Childress, president of the Virginia Coal and Energy Alliance, said he doesn’t buy the narrative of the “demise” of the coal industry. The U.S. still relies on coal for 30 percent of its electric power, he noted.
James Van Nostrand is a professor of law at West Virginia University and director of the school’s Center for Energy and Sustainable Development. Van Nostrand said from an economic standpoint, the industry and its jobs can never recover. Natural gas is much cheaper than coal, and wind and solar have become very cost competitive, he said.
Environmental impacts aside, “coal doesn’t stack up very well,” Van Nostrand said.
From Unemployment to a New Industry
As soon as Pittman knew he only had a month left at his job, he called the unemployment office in Norton, Virginia, and told them about the education grant advertisement he had seen. They put him in touch with Stephen Mullins, the regional POWER Grant coordinator for the Southwest Virginia Workforce Development Board.
Through grant money, Mullins helps laid-off coal miners, power plant workers and other dislocated coal industry workers receive educational training supported by Mountain Empire Community College.
Mullins said whether the coal industry can return to its former economic health is a moot point for many of those helped by the POWER Grant.
“If a good job in the coal industry comes up, they’ll probably take it — they’d be foolish not to,” Mullins said. “But … most of the folks that I’ve interviewed … are tired of the cyclical nature of the boom and bust of the coal industry.”
The Metallurgical Market
Harry Childress said Virginia is currently experiencing some stabilization in the market.
The reason for that stabilization, and much of Childress’ optimism, is due to metallurgical coal, which is used to make steel and comprises 60 percent to 70 percent of the coal produced in Virginia, he said.
Metallurgical coal is also called coking coal. The coal is converted to a substance called coke by driving off impurities. Through exposure to high temperatures and other processes, the coke is made into steel.
“We have some of the best metallurgical coal in the world, and metallurgical coal is sold worldwide to help produce steel,” Childress said.
According to the World Coal Association, global steel production is dependent on coal, as 70 percent of the steel produced today uses coal.
Childress said China and Australia are two of the United States’ biggest importers of metallurgical coal.
Van Nostrand agrees with Childress.
“[The metallurgical market] has been fairly steady throughout central and southern Appalachia,” Van Nostrand. “It hasn’t been nearly as cyclical.”
Trump and Coal
As a candidate for president, Donald Trump ran as a champion for workers in the coal industry.
In an August trip to Abingdon, Trump took the stage at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center surrounded by people wearing miners’ hats and carrying signs that read “Trump Digs Coal.”
“I know you’re discouraged,” Trump said at the event. “Give it one more chance.”
In March, Trump signed an executive order that eliminated a number of restrictions on fossil fuel production. For years, many in the coal industry in the Tri-Cities area have blamed tight federal restrictions for the coal bust.
“That is what this is all about: bringing back our jobs, bringing back our dreams and making America wealthy again,” Trump said during the signing ceremony at the Environmental Protection Agency headquarters.
But bringing those jobs back may prove to be an uphill battle for the administration.
About 1.9 million Americans work in the power generation industry, according to the Department of Energy. Last year, solar and natural gas jobs employed many more people than coal.
In 2016, there were more than 373,000 solar workers. Compare that to 398,000 workers in natural gas and 160,000 in coal. Wind power jobs hit nearly 102,000, according to the DOE.
If Trump keeps a campaign promise to make infrastructure a key focus of his presidency, then the U.S. will need plenty of steel, and in turn, metallurgical coal, Childress said.
“[The administration wants] to bring jobs back into the United States,” he said. “When you bring jobs back and you’re producing things, you need electricity.”
Van Nostrand agrees with Childress, noting that if Congress were to pass a trillion-dollar spending plan, as has been suggested, the metallurgical market would do well.
In other aspects of Trump’s actions and promises about coal and the environment, Van Nostrand said Trump isn’t being realistic.
Trump rolled back the Clean Power Plan, which aimed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from electrical power generation by 32 percent within 25 years relative to 2005 levels. He has also taken steps to defang the EPA.
Van Nostrand said those steps don’t matter in the economics of the power industry.
“There’s not a utility in the country that’s saying, ‘Oh, we’re going to do something different now; we’re going to start building coal plants again.’
“It doesn’t change the economics,” Van Nostrand said. “Natural gas is so much cheaper.”
As for Trump’s plans to bring coal jobs back: “I just think that it was never a realistic promise,” he said. “It can never be fulfilled.”
Jimmy Pittman said he and his co-workers had seen the impending unemployment coming long before it happened.
Many of them were preparing, taking steps to get out of debt or not creating any new debt.
Through the POWER Grant, Pittman is now in the midst of classes at MECC. Topics covered include electrical work and heating and air conditioning. Pittman said he learned many of the skills he is being taught while working in the coal industry, but he had no documentation — it was all on-the-job training.
Obtaining that formal training is vital to getting a job, Mullins said.
“Regardless of my opinion and my prognostication about the future of coal, the POWER Grants that I coordinate offer options that these dislocated coal industry workers might not have had access to,” he said.
Pittman took a full course load of 15 credit hours last semester. He’s taking summer classes and plans to be done with his education by December.
Mullins said the POWER Grant program is all about helping the workers become more competitive job seekers.
“They’ve chosen to put more tools in their tool belts,” he said.
Jimmy Pittman, 52, of Rose Hill, Virginia. |
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