February 1, 2024 - Last fall the West Virgina Coal Association (WVCA) embarked upon an aggressive initiative to reinvigorate and grow the loosely structured Friends of Coal data base and army of coal miners and their families to act on specific issues and to push back on anti-coal actions. 

Through email alerts and highly interactive social media platforms, we successfully used the Bloomberg petition and a recent EPA rulemaking to signup new Friends of Coal Members and generate greater responses from within this grassroots organization. 

Since October, we’ve added 12,785 new FoC supporters and 14,000 signatures to the petition urging Bloomberg to stop his war on coal. Remarkably, 1,260 letters were submitted to EPA by FoC members objecting to the Agency’s Carbon Rule for weakening grid reliability. 

Upon reviewing the success of our efforts, the Association’s Board of Director’s approved continuing this effort (which is currently spinning on FACEBOOK generating additional responses) throughout the first quarter of 2024, at which time we will more thoroughly evaluate its performance and plan accordingly.  

We are also working closely with America's Coal Associations and other state coal associations to grow and amplify FOC presence and affect throughout other coal regions across the country.  Our FoC membership drive and action alerts resulted in responses from 49 states. 

Our PR team found the overall response from our collective efforts to be nothing short of astonishing and recommend we stay the course and continue to grow this program and corps of coal supporters. Special thanks to all our members who have encouraged their employees to become an active Friend of Coal.

Friends of Coal Grassroots & Social Media Initiative

Chris Hamilton, 

President & CEO,

West Virginia Coal Association