WildEarth Guardians

Monday, August 17, 2015
Guardians Rallies to Keep Coal in the Ground

Interior Department Reform of Federal Coal Program on the Agenda Tomorrow in Denver
Contact: Jeremy Nichols (303) 437-7663

Denver—The U.S. Department of the Interior is moving to reform the way it manages publicly owned coal in the United States. As an initial step, the agency is holding a series of public listening sessions which started in Washington, D.C., and will continue throughout the West, including a session in Denver tomorrow.

This listening session is expected to be particularly controversial since a Denver federal court in May ruled that the Interior Department's approval to expand two coal mines in Northwestern Colorado were illegally approved, upholding a lawsuit filed by WildEarth Guardians challenging the government's failure to include the public and safeguard the environment. The ruling relates to the Colowyo and Trapper coal mines, which fuel Tri-State Generation and Transmission's Craig coal-fired power plant -- the second largest in the state.

WildEarth Guardians' Climate and Energy Program Director, Jeremy Nichols, will be among the voices at tomorrow's listening session, calling on the U.S. Interior Department and Interior Secretary, Sally Jewell, to keep publicly owned coal in the ground.  WildEarth Guardians and other groups, including 350.org and Greenpeace, will be rallying before the hearing with banners and t-shirts calling on the Interior Department to stop approving more publicly owned coal mining and to keep it in the ground.

"It's time for the Interior Department to shut it down," said Jeremy Nichols, Climate and Energy Program Director for WildEarth Guardians. "Keeping our coal in the ground is the only way to ensure our country successfully transitions to clean energy and effectively confronts the climate crisis."

WildEarth Guardians is calling on the Interior Department to chart a path toward keeping publicly owned coal in the ground to protect the climate. As set forth in a new report released earlier in the month, Keep it in the Ground: A Plan to Safeguard the Climate and End Mining of Our Publicly Owned Coal, the reasons for ending the federal coal program are all too clear. Study after study has found that moving beyond coal is the single most important means of limiting carbon emissions. Most recently, scientists concluded that to meet modest climate targets, the United States must keep 95% of its recoverable coal reserves in the ground.

WHAT: Interior Department "Listening Session" on Federal Coal Program

WHEN: Tuesday, August 18, 2015, WildEarth Guardians Rally Starts at Noon, Listening Session Scheduled for 1:00-4:00 pm MST

WHERE: Denver Marriott West, 1717 Denver West Blvd, Golden, CO 80401

The Interior Department oversees nearly a trillion tons of publicly owned coal reserves in the lower 48 United States, the vast majority in the American West. These reserves are the source of the majority of all the coal mined and consumed in the U.S. In fiscal year 2014 alone, more than 40% of all coal produced in the nation came from publicly owned reserves managed by Interior.

Coal is mined for one reason, to be burned. And the burning of publicly owned coal produces massive amounts of carbon pollution. All told, reports indicate that 11% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. and 46% of all carbon dioxide emissions from coal combustion can be traced back to the mining of publicly owned coal. The link between the Interior Department's coal program and carbon emissions has been described as a massive "blind spot" of the Obama Administration.

Still, the Interior Department continues to lease and condone the mining of more publicly owned coal. Since 2009, the agency has auctioned off more than 2.2 billion tons of coal, including the sale of 40 million tons in June of this year.

Interior's coal decisions threaten to set back the national efforts to reduce carbon, including the Obama Administration's signature climate initiative, the Clean Power Plan, which was announced earlier this month.