giove

see bak for lnx and grafs<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22052019/coal-future-southern-states-conference-energy-department-dominion-solar-gas-transition" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22052019/coal-future-southern-states-conference-energy-department-dominion-solar-gas-transition</a> theme of the Southern States Energy Board conference was a new era for coal, but while Trump administration officials talked up coal's future, utility and power grid officials described a shift to cleaner power. Credit: Orjan F. Ellingvag/Corbis via Getty Images
KINGSPORT, Tenn. — They came from states like Georgia, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee to rally around coal as U.S. coal use continues to tumble.
But Joe Giove III, with the U.S. Department of Energy, was having nothing of the doom and gloom talk about an industry on the slide.
This was the 40th year that the Southern States Energy Board met jointly with the Virginia coal industry, and a two-day conference of hand-wringing and searching for a new or renewed path for coal in a carbon-constrained world was under way. Giove was there to sell the use and necessity of coal, and that's what he did, relaying stories of how coal had become a misunderstood underdog and how losing too much coal threatens people's lives.
"One of the biggest things we face now, it's censorship," Giove, the Trump administration's director of coal business operations, told members of the energy board this week. Too many people think "we're beyond coal," or "we're not doing coal anymore," so that means  "we don't want to hear what you have to say" about coal.
Children are being taught that "coal is evil," he said, that "green is good, fossil is bad—that's all they've heard."
Joe Giove III, director of coal business operations for the U.S. Energy Department. Credit: James BruggersJoe Giove III, director of coal business operations for the U.S. Energy Department, told the audience coal would have been better off if the Midwest power grid had failed during a bitter cold snap this past winter. “The good news is nothing did happen,” he said. “But the bad news is, the grid didn’t go down.” Credit: James Bruggers
Giove described coal as "just a resource"—not mentioning its health-harming pollution and contributions to climate change—and provocatively suggested the nation would have been better off had the Midwest been plunged into a widespread power failure amid sub zero temperatures during a severe cold snap last winter. The polar vortex event was seen as a test for managing a grid that relies increasingly on renewable energy, and less on coal.
"The good news is nothing did happen," Giove said. "The grid didn't go down. But the bad news is, the grid didn't go down."
That has allowed environmental advocates "to go on working on getting rid of coal," he said.
The Mood Inside: Not Nearly So BrightBurning coal is a powerful source of greenhouse gas emissions that warm the planet. Last fall, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that carbon dioxide emissions need to reach net zero by around 2050 to keep global warming in check, and that getting there will mean stopping the burning of fossil fuels.Yet as domestic coal continues to decline, outcompeted economically by natural gas and increasingly by wind and solar, state and mining officials from the South gathered around a surprisingly optimistic theme: embarking on a new era for coal. Giove was among several Trump administration officials there to let them know the president was on their side.
But the mood in the convention center wasn't nearly as bright.Part grievance session, part blame-fest, part pep talk and part strategy session on how to tilt federal or state policies to favor coal, with all the recent announcements of governments and utilities planning to shed coal in favor of greener alternatives, and a big new coal bankruptcy filing just last week, this was not a happy gathering.
In fact, that energy board session included an on-the-spot anonymous poll of how its participating members view the condition of the coal industry.In a word, they were downbeat.
Chart: Results of a poll at the conference on coal's futureThree-fourths expected less coal to be mined in the United States in the next five years, and none thought it very likely or even likely that coal jobs would return to even what they were in the 2000s.