Feb 24, 2017 5 min read

The loss of coal mining jobs in Washington and Greene counties was a central topic in the region in the period leading up to the November 2016 election, so when the League of Women Voters convened its annual question-and-answer session with area legislators, some may have considered it a provocative question when the moderator asked about investing and creating jobs in the clean energy sector.

State Rep. John Maher, R-Upper St. Clair, chairman of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, used the opportunity to praise the Keystone State during a gathering Friday at the Presbyterian SeniorCare chapel on a record-setting day as temperatures approached 80 degrees.

“If Pennsylvania were a nation, we would be the only nation in the world that met the Kyoto Accord,” he said of an international treaty that set limits on greenhouse gas emissions that the U.S. government did not sign.

“Pennsylvania’s greenhouse gases have decreased by a third to 40 percent over the last 10 years. What has happened here in Pennsylvania has not happened anywhere else in the world, but never gets mentioned. If we really want to address global warming, if we really want to have cleaner air, when success happens, it needs to be noticed because otherwise, why go to the trouble? It was market forces that cleaned up Pennsylvania’s air. It was using natural gas instead of other fuels.”

Maher predicted wind and solar energy require batteries with storage capacity “so at night and on a windless day, you’ll still have power. That will be the game-changing technology … I think it will be driven by the market. It won’t be driven by commandments. The day will come when you all will have a battery in your garage,” he told a gathering of about 40.

Freshman State Rep. Bud Cook, R-West Pike Run, said, “We are blessed in our region to have a tremendous amount of energy resources. In the 49th District, we have a lot of coal miners,” he said, and each mining job generates seven to eight associated jobs in rail and barges. He is a proponent of coal liquefaction, which converts coal to liquid fuels and petrochemicals.

A University of Texas presentation summed up the cost of coal liquefaction as “very expensive.” According to a copyrighted article by E. Ralph Hostetter on the Newsmax.com website, “The cost ratio of 1.25 barrels per ton of coal at a cost of $14 to $54 per ton would prove very advantageous with oil at $119 per barrel on Aug. 11, 2008.”

But the price of crude oil was $54 per barrel according to Friday’s Nasdaq and central Appalachian coal as of Feb. 17 was $51.60 per short ton on the Quandl.com website. Natural gas, on the NYMEX was $2.63 per thousand BTUs.

“The marketplace is the place to let that happen, but we can’t turn our backs on the energy resources we have here. Is it law or policy?” Cook asked.

State Sen. Camera Bartolotta, R-Monongahela, represents the 46th District which she called “coal country and Marcellus Shale.” The district includes Washington County, with the exception of Peters Township; Greene County; and southern Beaver County, and she is vice chairman of the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee.

“We all want clean water, we all want clean air, and we all want to leave a beautiful, pristine planet for our kids, but we also don’t want seniors to die when it’s 32 degrees outside,” she said. “We also want to have enough energy to keep the power running in an emergency room or in an operating room, or any of those things. It’s civilization. We have come light years with our technology.”

Most people call them “electric cars,” but Bartolotta prefers the term, “coal cars because it takes a power plant to generate the electricity that you plug it into. People just don’t seem to understand that energy comes from somewhere. …

“Windmills are great when the wind is blowing. When it’s not, they run on natural gas to keep them turning. Also they’re massive and they’re made with steel. So how many windmills does it take to make a windmill? You need metallurgical coal; you need furnaces that burn hot enough to melt steel.

“If we eliminated fossil fuels, everyone in this room would be naked, we would have no lights, there would be no carpeting, there’d be no chairs. We do need certain things that come from fossil fuels. A lot of things come from coal, and we rely on them on a daily basis.

“Wind energy has been subsidized for 25 years to the tune of about $5 trillion tax dollars. It’s not efficient enough yet. Solar is not efficient enough yet. The taxpayer is footing the bill for subsidizing renewable energy sources. Let those tax dollars go into research and development. Let’s really put that money where it does the most good.”

State Rep. Brandon Neuman, D-North Strabane, a member of Maher’s committee, called the education system key in advancing new technology and efficiency. “It is up to the market now to take over,” he said.

Through natural gas pipelines, Western Pennsylvania can fuel jobs in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and “a lot of times we lose that perspective,” Neuman commented before calling for a strengthened electrical power grid that uses fossil fuels while continuing to seek alternatives.