Name: Covid contributes to coal's downturn; Ohio weighs viability of mine clean-up fund
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Covid contributes to coal's downturn; Ohio weighs viability of mine clean-up fund

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The Columbus DispatchView CommentsCoal production levels are continuing to plummet each year in Ohio, a trajectory that has&nbsp;accelerated during&nbsp;the pandemic."The overall use of energy has decreased a great deal. It's just further depressed the market, which was&nbsp;already depressed by price," Mike Cope, president of the Ohio Coal Association, said during a recent&nbsp;Ohio Reclamation&nbsp;Forfeiture&nbsp;Fund&nbsp;Advisory&nbsp;Board meeting.&nbsp;As of Jan. 30, Ohio produced 301&nbsp;short tons of coal so far this year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That is a 33.2% decrease compared with the same period in 2020. Records show coal production in Ohio has steadily dropped each year."The market is&nbsp;weak, and COVID&nbsp;has just made the market weaker," Cope said.The industry has faced challenges as demand for coal&nbsp;dwindles and more companies shift to cleaner fuels and use bounteous amounts of cheap&nbsp;natural gas.All of this has happened as renewable sources of energy become more affordable.&nbsp;President Joe Biden plans to guide the country to 100% clean energy with zero emissions in the electricity sector by 2035.Ohio's reclamation fund collects money from coal-mining companies by charging a severance tax of 14 cents on each ton of coal mined. Companies also pay $2,500 for each acre mined.However, with lower&nbsp;coal production, it means less money is going into the fund."We were seeing a 50% to 60% decrease," Dave Crow,&nbsp;chief of&nbsp;Ohio Department of Natural Resources&nbsp;Division of Mineral Resources Management, said during the meeting.&nbsp;"We're projecting&nbsp;that trend to continue for the next quarter. It's pretty striking."The state's fund is in place to reclaim mining sites if companies fail to follow through with remediating them.&nbsp;The last forfeiture that relied on the state fund was in 2014.As of Feb. 1, the fund's balance was listed at&nbsp;$25.6 million.The concern is that as more coal mining companies file for bankruptcy or choose to consolidate, the fund could be depleted, leaving Ohio taxpayers to pick&nbsp;up the remaining&nbsp;tab.The board has hired&nbsp;Taylor &amp; Mulder,&nbsp;a property and casualty actuarial consulting firm, to complete a new actuarial study on the fund."If there are a lot of permits held by one company,&nbsp;then one company&nbsp;going belly up could mean a huge number of reclamations," said Daniel Lupton, a specialist in predictive analytics with the Taylor &amp; Mulder.&nbsp;"That could be&nbsp;problematic."In 2019, . Permits were transferred when the company became&nbsp;&nbsp;Had that not happened, estimates show that&nbsp;it would have cost more than $202 million to clean up all of the Murray mining sites."We've had some large firms declare bankruptcy, large coal companies&nbsp;in Ohio.&nbsp;We've gotten through all those safely," said Sandy Ramos, legal counsel for the state's&nbsp;Division of Mineral Resources Management.The latest actuarial report will&nbsp;factor in those scenarios."We'll make sure to take a look at that just so that we have it," Lupton said. "But it'll be kind of a worst-case scenario, because it sounds like permits have been successfully transferred from bankruptcy. That's tremendous good news."Cope said the coal industry has hurdles ahead, including that could be forthcoming to undo Trump's&nbsp;Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, which did not require coal-fired power plants to pollute less.The previous administration also stripped away protections for ephemeral streams, which flow after heavy rainfall. If they are reinstated, companies would&nbsp;have to protect those streams near mining sites.Cope, who described the Biden administration as "hostile" to the coal industry said, "The problem is going to be in the next year or two if they overturn the ACE rule and vacate it. And the feds go back to the Obama policies of overregulating the streams, then that will help further erode the profitability of the coal industry and will have a very bad effect on us."bburger@dispatch.com@ByBethBurgerView Comments

The Columbus DispatchView CommentsCoal production levels are continuing to plummet each year in Ohio, a trajectory that has&nbsp;accelerated during&nbsp;the pandemic."The overall use of energy has decreased a great deal. It's just further depressed the market, which was&nbsp;already depressed by price," Mike Cope, president of the Ohio Coal Association, said during a recent&nbsp;Ohio Reclamation&nbsp;Forfeiture&nbsp;Fund&nbsp;Advisory&nbsp;Board meeting.&nbsp;As of Jan. 30, Ohio produced 301&nbsp;short tons of coal so far this year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration....

Covid contributes to coal's downturn; Ohio weighs viability of mine clean-up fund

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