I invite you, the reader to allow me to take you through a mental exercise…
You and I are businessmen, we make an essential product, one that is in constant demand by the public. We’ll call our product a, “widget”. For years our widgets have grown and prospered to the point of being closely monitored and regulated by our Federal Government. We have new widget factories and old widget factories, but the regulators tell us that we can’t close our old and most inefficient widget factories because they may be needed to meet widget demand in an emergency.
So we go along making widgets, making profits, while our good widget factories offset the cost of our bad widget factories and our regulators and the communities we serve are all happy that people are employed and there is no shortage of widgets.
Suddenly, the political winds shift, and now the entire widget industry is under attack by just one of our former regulatory allies, we’ll call them the “Department of Regulating Things We Don’t Even Understand”, because we use something in the manufacture of our widgets they object to; we’ll call it, “black dye number 5”. The regulating agency doesn’t mind the other dyes we use to make our widgets, whether it be blue, green, yellow, or red; but they insist that the evil black dye#5 must go.
Now remember, you and I are the businessmen and in being good businessmen we understand our widget making process and we know that black dye #5 was one of the main ingredients we used in the making of our widgets back when we first started making widgets, but has since been replaced by other things. So we look at the new demands from the DRTWDEU, which basically opens a door that gives us the perfect excuse to reduce our headcount of employees, closing old, outdated and inefficient widget factories and create a widget shortage in the market that will pump up our widget profits.
Of course, you and I are smart businessmen and we’re going to publicly decry the intereference and over-reach of the Department of Regulating Things We Don’t Even Understand, give passionate speeches lamenting the closing of operations that had previously served as anchor industries in the communities in which they served and were located, and of course we’ll show great sympathy for those former employees we had to turn out into the cold.
Behind the veil of public opinion, though; being smart businessmen, we are raking in the profits, enjoying the fact that we have less overhead, and we can use the threat of the widget factories we closed to strongarm the employees we still have to accept concessions because they are now living in fear that their widget factory will be next.
The reality is that we don’t make widgets, we make and deliver electricity, but you can apply the elements from the example given about widgets to the state of our industry. The EPA (for our purposes, known as “The Department of Regulating Things We Don’t Even Understand”) has targeted coal (know by the pseudonym “Black Dye #5” in our little excercise), while ignoring the problems presented by other available fuel sources.
The “shale gas revolution” is fine when talking to investors and the uninformed, but we, as Utility Workers, know firsthand of the dangers of old gas infrastructure like piping and pumping stations, which is not unlike our aged electrical grid.
Everytime industry officials are ready to herald a new nuclear power renaissance, a nuclear power plant blows up and reminds us of the dangers involved in nuclear energy.
The rest of the EPA regulations seem to be formulated without understanding the technical limitations and lack of development in those energy sources they are counting on to take the place of coal. Like Carbon Capture (CCS), much of the embryonic renewable energy market is theoretical instead of tried and true proven and viable technologies that are fully scalable, employable, and capable of meeting the nation’s demand for reliable and affordable power.
America’s remaining coal plants, the ones lucky enough to survive the onslaught of the battle between owners and the EPA, are the most efficient and cleanest users of coal in the history of electrical generation. They use the latest in proven technologies to reduce SO2, NOX, and mercury emmissions. They are safe, reliable, and good stewards of the environment.
The main thing they do lies in their impact on the electrical market in keeping the price of electricity affordable.
The real opportunity and challenge for us as Utility Workers is to educate the public on energy issues. Why should energy companies do it when they are reaping the benefits of the EPA’s actions?
Why would the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) want to do this, when all they can see is the closure of coal plants that they have deemed as evil?
This is a perfect storm scenario in which unions have to be the voice of reason and an informed source for both the public and the regulators so that coal’s place in the energy marketplace is understood and appreciated. Unions often find themselves in the role of acting as the checks and balances, and with the upheaval within our energy industry that role is more important than ever.