How will coal comeback affect Berks County?

by Steve Reinbrecht

President Tweet said Tuesday that he is ending the federal government’s war on coal.

What will the revived industry look like in Berks County?

There are no mines in Berks.

1953 Ford Crown Victoria

But they used to burn traincarsful of coal, smack dab in the middle of the county. The Titus Generating Station, a coal-fired power station, started burning coal to turn turbines to produce electricity in 1953.

The 225-megawatt plant in Cumru Township closed in 2014 because of the high cost of keeping it compliant with new environmental regulations, the Reading Eagle reported.

NRG Energy, of Princeton, N.J., owns the 233-acre property, next to the Schuylkill River and railroad tracks.

But despite the president’s call for a revival of the black-gold mineral, NRG Energy has no plans “whatsoever” to resume using coal to make electricity at the Titus Generating station, David Gaier, a spokesman for NRG Energy, told me Thursday.

The plant can still produce electricity with smaller turbines powered by natural gas or oil when called on by the regional grid, Gaier said.

That’s how other power plants in Berks are producing electricity – with oil or gas, not coal.

For example, the Dynegy plant in Ontelaunee Township, powered by natural gas, has a capacity of 567 megawatts, twice Titus' capacity. And a Canadian company, EmberClear, has built a 450-MW natural gas plant in Birdsboro.

In any case, the demise of coal burning at Titus is good for local air quality, especially east of the plant, in the path of prevailing wind.

In 2005, the latest data I could find, Titus belched out 935 tons of particulates smaller than 10 microns, and 818 tons of particulates smaller than 2.5 microns – the really killer nano-grit that gets lodged deep in your lungs. In 2007, the plant emitted 1.2 million tons of carbon dioxide.

President Tweet’s scheme won’t do much for economic development in Pennsylvania.

In 2015, the coal industry employed 6,633 people in Pennsylvania [“includes all employees engaged in production, preparation, processing, development, maintenance, repair shop, or yard work at mining operations, including office workers”].

That was down about 16 percent from 2014, when the industry employed 7,938, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

For comparison, about 125,000 public teachers work in Pennsylvania.

Coal was historically important in the region, especially north of Reading, but production has declined.

In 2000, Pennsylvania produced about 64.8 million metric tons. Schuylkill County, directly north of Berks, produced about 1.1 million tons of that. 

In 2015, Pennsylvania produced 45 million tons, with Schuylkill producing 900,000 tons of that.

Here’s what the president said:

“The miners told me about the attacks on their jobs and their livelihoods.  They told me about the efforts to shut down their mines, their communities, and their very way of life.  I made them this promise:  We will put our miners back to work.  (Applause.)  We've already eliminated a devastating anti-coal regulation -- but that was just the beginning.

“Today, I'm taking bold action to follow through on that promise.  My administration is putting an end to the war on coal.  We're going to have clean coal -- really clean coal.  With today’s executive action, I am taking historic steps to lift the restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion, and to cancel job-killing regulations.”