By Kris Maher | The Wall Street Journal
LIVELY GROVE, Ill.—Coal has been losing favor as an energy source for a few years, thanks to relatively cheap and clean-burning natural gas and stricter environmental rules. But at least in this part of the country, mining is a booming business.
One coal mine in this farming community southeast of St. Louis is part of an energy project that has added 580 jobs and helped fund a high school and court building. In McLeansboro, 70 miles to the east, a mine under construction has brought jobs and several new businesses. A Peabody Energy Corp. BTU +1.02% mine farther east, in southern Indiana, is now the biggest coal mine east of the Mississippi.
Last year, overall coal production in the U.S. fell 7% from a year earlier, with the biggest decline in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin and in Central Appalachia mines of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. But in the Illinois Basin, which includes southern Illinois and Indiana and western Kentucky, coal output rose by 10% last year, and the region over the next several years is projected to surpass Central Appalachia in coal output for the first time ever.
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If you’d like to discuss energy issues, contact Court Rich, Co-Chair of Rose Law Group’s Renewable Energy Department at crich@roselawgroup.comFate of Nuclear Energy
