Energy: Coal's Clouded Post-Strike Future

The fuel is there, and it can be dug—but plants may not want to use it

Can a 19th century fuel that is dangerous to mine, difficult to transport and dirty to burn free the world's most energy-hungry nation from its crushing dependence on foreign oil? All along, that has been the big question mark over coal, the linchpin in President Carter's National Energy Plan. Carter's goal for coal is to boost output to 1.2 billion tons a year by 1985—an unprecedented increase of almost 75% over the 685 million tons mined last year—and to coax electric utilities and industry to burn the coal instead of imported oil or scarce natural gas. A cloud of uncertainty as dark as coal dust hung over that ambitious goal even before 165,000 members of the United Mine Workers walked out of the pits last December, shutting off about half the nation's coal output. Settlement of their marathon, 109-day walkout has done nothing to clear up the doubts.

Certainly the coal is there. Beneath the pit heads of Appalachia and the Ohio Valley, and under the sprawling strip mines of the West, lie coal seams rich enough to meet the country's power needs for centuries, no matter how much energy consumption may grow. The physical task of digging the coal is no great problem. But the key question is whether industry can be tempted or prodded into burning the coal in the prodigious quantities that the National Energy Plan contemplates. Officially, Washington's answer is put bluntly by Secretary of Energy James Schlesinger: "We have no alternative." Unless coal is developed as rapidly as possible, the nation will have to squander more and more of its treasure on imported oil. Domestic production of petroleum, natural gas and nuclear power cannot expand fast enough to fill the gap.

But, Schlesinger's words to the contrary, Washington has not yet demonstrated to industry that it can or ought to pay the costs of converting to coal.

Those costs will be enormous, particularly in the West, where utilities rely heavily on oil-and gas-fired plants. Nationwide, Chase Econometrics calculates that by 1985 the total cost of converting old oil-or gas-burning plants might reach $60 billion. That figure does not include the cost of constructing new coal-fired plants, since many of those factories would have to be built anyway, whatever fuel was used to power them—but the cost will nonetheless be huge.

Much of the expenditure will have to go for pollution-control equipment, which can add anywhere from 15% to 40% to the construction and operating costs of a coal-fired plant. Yet no matter how much money is spent, a study by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare warns, burning coal on the scale that Carter contemplates will make the air dirtier. HEW officials think the danger can be kept to a minimum by strict adherence to federal clean-air, safety and waste-disposal standards, but concern persists—with reason. Reacting to it, Washington is virtually certain to require all coal-burning plants, even those that burn low-sulfur Western coal, to install "scrubbers" that cleanse coal smoke. That is one reason why the cost of converting to coal will be so high.