Van Jones: Talk to Eric Mathis About Green Jobs, Not Coal Welfare, in Appalachia

Dear Van Jones:
You need to travel to Mingo County, West Virginia and meet Eric Mathis, a scrappy young economist in the Appalachian coalfields, who is putting together one of the most dynamic green jobs consortiums in the country. Their underfunded but clear-eyed, desperately needed and brilliant project--JOBS, or Just Open Businesses That Are Sustainable--is laying out a blueprint for a sustainable economy at ground zero in our nation's energy crisis. The JOBS message: Let's talk green jobs in the Appalachian coalfields of West Virginia, Kentucky and southern Ohio.

Some of the JOBS proposals include a community wind initiative, and setting up manufacturing centers for renewable energy products. My favorite: a biomass facility.

Mathis writes:

"Here in Mingo Co. we are performing the preliminary feasibility studies for a 2.4 MW biomass facility. This facility would consist of 4 600KW rated biomass generators that will produce electricity at an 80% efficiency rate. Therefore, the peak energy production will be rated at 1.8 MW. For the proposed feed stock, we would use mill residues. In addition, the feedstock to energy ratio roughly 3 dry tons of feed stock to 1 MWh production. This facility would produce 12.6 GWh/yr. Therefore, we would need 37,800 dry tons of feed stock per year to develop this facility (I am in the middle of this analysis). The 1999 study done by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory said that there were roughly 727K dry tons of wood waste per year that were at a price tag under $30/ton.

In case you were curious as to why we were just wanting a 1.8 MW capacity facility, this amount of electricity would be enough to power roughly 1200 households. According to the 2000 Census, there are only 11,303 households in the whole of Mingo County. With our current desire for distributed generation, as well as the desire of both FRIEnergy and The JOBS Project to develop a wind facility in Mingo County as well (i.e., CWI above), there will still be a need for electricity in the area so that we do not forsake our desire for distributed energy generation.

We will need to secure roughly 2.5-3 million in funds in order to successfully complete this project. This is relatively low in comparison to wind energy development, with a price tag that is nearly 65% of the total cost. "

More so, a study released last week by the Appalachian Regional Commission demonstrates that more jobs can be gained through energy efficiency initiatives than mountaintop removal operations:

"The end result of this policy analysis, then, suggests that an early program stimulus which drives a higher level of efficiency investments can actually increase economic impact, creating an average of 16,000 net new jobs each year in the first five years of the study, and rising to an estimated average of 60,000 net new jobs over the last decade of the analysis. This is roughly equivalent to the employment that would be directly and indirectly supported by the construction and operation of 480 small manufacturing plants within Appalachia."

For more details, see:
http://www.arc.gov/images/energy/Energy_Efficiency_in_Appalachia.pdf

In the meantime, the coal industry receives billions of dollars in federal and state subsidies. Read: Dirty Coal Welfare. A 2007 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimated that the coal industry receives about $8 billion per year in federal subsidies. This is on top of the fact that taxpayers continue to foot the bill for billions of dollars in the cleanup of abandoned mines and black lung program subsidies. According to one study, the "taxpayer-funded shortage (for the Black Lung Program) is expected to increase to $68 billion by 2040."

When US Senator Robert Byrd was first elected to the US House of Representatives in 1952, over 130,000 West Virginians worked in the coal mines. Today, roughly 20,000 actual coal miners descend into the underground mines or saddle up on heavy equipment to strip mine the ridges, according to official energy statistics from the US government.

In truth, jobs have not been lost to environmental regulations; they have been subjected to the whims of the volatile energy market, super mechanization, including the often overlooked bane of longwall mining in the northern panhandle, and mountaintop removal.

In eastern Kentucky, for example, coal mining employment in many counties have dropped by over 60 percent since 1980. The Kentuckians for the Commonwealth has put together a very illuminating chart of the economic realities of strip mining's wrath in stripping jobs and livelihoods from the community.

Even as Gov. Joe Manchin lobbies for more coal favors from the EPA today in Washington, DC, his constituents know why West Virginia was ranked 50th in a recent Forbes survey for best states to do business.

Instead of traveling to Washington today, Manchin should have gone to Mingo County to meet Eric Mathis.

Van Jones should beat Manchin to Eric's door.

Or, as an updated Mother Jones saying might go: There will be no peace in West Virginia, until there are green jobs in West Virginia.

Comments

[quidam56]

Appalachia can't stand anymore of the prosperity thanks to THE COAL INDUSTRY, we are being bombed, blasted and bulldozed right into 3rd world America...

http://www.wisecountyissues.com/?p=138

[Joseph Mathis]

Part II

Well, it is the "equal distribution of its blessing" that the people involved with the JOBS project seek to secure for the "majority" of coalfield residents. This juxtaposition of direct and representational democracy is merely used as an explanatory device and is not to be taken as a black and white issue. For now, we have to live with the later form of democracy but according to the emerging doctrine of sustainability, we have to begin listening to the local voices of the "majority" because it is here where true sustainability resides, that is, within the human element of this great system that we call the earth. Our ability to sustain civilization as we know it lies not only in the environmental and economic aspects of sustainability, it also lies within the bodies and minds of people who have been poisoned, killed, and pushed off their land for an unsustainable industry, that is, the coal industry. It is time now for those voices to be heard and I along with many other committed organizers, business women and men, activists, and concerned citizens have been some of the first to hear the voices of sustainability, to hear the voices of the people, the voices of tomorrow.

Thanks to all the committed community folks who stood up for the foundation of any democracy, that is, liberty and justice for all.

[Joseph Mathis]

Part I

I just want to note that Van Jones, or anybody else for that matter, should not just direct their attention to little ole me. I am a but a part of a bigger movement that has been brewing for well over 150 years and perhaps its most resilient icon is my favorite, although a little to reactionary for me, Mother Jones. She, like myself and many other residents of coal fields across the Appalachian region, would like to see partial or full community ownership over the means of production. Ms. Jones butted heads with unions and coal operators alike. Much like her, I as well as many others fighting for liberty in the coal fields of Appalachia, feel that the ingredient missing here and in many other resource colonies throughout the world is simple... Democracy or more appropriately stated, direct democracy. An institutional system that would hear the people and act appropratly according to those needs.

On the other hand we have the constitutional system (i.e., Representative Democracy) that was designed "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority", in the words of its leading framer, James Madison. Political power, he explained, must be in the hands of "the wealth of the nation", and to defend these interests against the "leveling spirit" of those who "labour under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings".

[blood1]

This Green Power report coupled with another article EPA to re-evaluate mountain top strip mining...w­ill make this a very good Wednesday.