Interior Secretary Urged to Reject Federal Coal Mine Plans

Ahead of Paris Climate Summit, Groups Call on Obama Administration to Keep Coal in the Ground

Additional Contact:

Joe Smyth, Greenpeace Communications, 831-566-5647, joe.smyth@greenpeace.org


Denver—One week before the Paris climate change summit, a broad coalition of organizations urged Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to reject several federal coal mining proposals, help prevent the export of US coal and carbon pollution, and reinforce US leadership in the global climate change negotiations.

The US Interior Department is weighing whether to approve 350 million tons of new coal mining in five states in the Western US. The letter from Greenpeace, WildEarth Guardians, Climate Solutions, Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, the Grand Canyon Trust, the Montana Environmental Information Center, and the Western Environmental Law Center noted that when this coal is burned, “it would unleash more than 650 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. This is as much carbon as is released annually by more than 136 million cars.”

“Right now, the last thing the Obama Administration should be doing is giving breaks to the coal industry and approving expanded mining,” said Jeremy Nichols, Climate and Energy Program Director for WildEarth Guardians. “The coal industry doesn’t need to be bailed out with our publicly owned coal, it’s time for Sally Jewell and the Interior Department to move to keep our coal in the ground.”

Earlier this month, eight US Senators urged Secretary Jewell to reduce carbon pollution from publicly owned coal, adding that, “as the United States prepares for the upcoming Paris session of the Conference of the Parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Department has a timely opportunity to take further steps to reform its coal program.”

Around 40% of US annual coal production comes from publicly-owned coal, managed by the Interior Department. A Greenpeace report found that the Interior Department has sold over 2.2 billion tons of publicly-owned coal since the beginning of the Obama administration, at an average cost of only $1.03 per ton. Burning that publicly-owned coal will release more than 3.9 billion metric tons of carbon pollution, an amount greater than the annual emissions from the entire European Union.

Earlier this year, a study published in the journal Nature found that more than 90% of US coal reserves must remain in the ground in order to limit global warming from exceeding two degrees Celsius. The US holds the world’s largest coal reserves.

When President Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, he acknowledged that, “ultimately, if we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky.”

The five mining approvals currently before the Interior Department are particularly problematic. One would expand Cloud Peak Energy’s Spring Creek mine in southeastern Montana, the state’s largest and the source of coal currently exported through the Pacific Northwest. Another plan would expand a mine in central Utah where the company, Bowie Resources, has indicated it intends to export coal through the Bay Area of California.

Another plan would expand the Belle Ayr mine in Wyoming, a large strip mine owned by Alpha Natural Resources, which declared bankruptcy in August. Another would expand an open pit lignite mine, the largest in the US, in North Dakota. Lignite is the dirtiest form of coal. Interior is also weighing whether to allow a Colorado mine to expand and continue fueling a nearby coal-fired power plant.

As the groups said in the letter, “The climate footprint of these mining proposals alone should be reason enough to exercise restraint. However, all indications are that these mining approvals are not even necessary and worse, would promote some of the most destructive coal industry practices.”

The groups joining the letter included WildEarth Guardians, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Climate Solutions, the Grand Canyon Trust, Clean Energy Action, the Montana Environmental Information Center, and Western Environmental Law Center.


 

All active news articles