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A tale of two coal economies, one post-industrial, one industrializing.
For those living near the Port of Baltimore, the transportation and storage of coal on its way from mines in the Appalachian Mountains to far-flung foreign kilns is “a mundane but ever-present imposition,” Chloe Ahmann, a Cornell University anthropologist, told me. Ahmann once worked as an elementary school teacher in Curtis Bay, a residential neighborhood adjacent to the working port, and wrote a book on the area’s post-industrial present.
“There are stories going back generation,” she said. “Coal dust covering everything in the neighborhood — bicycles, porches, windowsill. People wipe coal dust off their windows as a daily ritual.”
With the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge and subsequent shutdown of the port, that coal now has nowhere to go for the foreseeable future. Baltimoreans don’t want it, but its intended recipients thousands of miles away in India most certainly do.
“The top recipient of U.S. steam coal shipped from Baltimore by far over the past five years has been India, where the brick manufacturing industry has been a major customer,” the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in a report on the impacts of the bridge disaster. In January alone, the Port of Baltimore exported almost a million tons of coal to India, up almost three-fold from January of last year, according to Argus, a commodity data provider. In total, 17 million tons of thermal coal — the type used in power plants and brick kilns — left the U.S. via Baltimore in 2023, S&P Global found by analyzing Census Bureau data.
India is the world’s second largest consumer of coal after China, and coal accounts for over 70% of India's emissions from burning fuel, according to the International Energy Agency. (In contrast, coal accounts for a fifth of the United States’ emissions from combustion.) About a quarter of India’s emissions come from industry, much of which uses coal in its processes, including steelmaking, and cement and, yes, brick manufacturing.
Brickmaking in India is often done on small scales by local producers, but even so, its energy consumption is “comparable to the organized construction industries such as cement and steel,” according to research published in Nature India. Many of those bricks are used to build homes, part and parcel of the country’s astounding economic growth. Along with its steel and cement industries, brickmaking has transformed India — whose inflation-adjusted per capita GDP of around $1,800 in 1990 would have made it one of the world's poorest countries today — into the third-largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world.
The same brick industry that produces the literal building blocks of India’s homebuilding sector is also responsible for immensely damaging particulate pollution. The combination of coal and biomass used to fire brick kilns is responsible for around 75 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions — comparable to the total emissions of Washington State, Arizona, or the 2021 California wildfires — and 100,000 tons of black carbon emissions, according to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition.
Air pollution in South Asia is one of the largest public health problems in the world. India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh all ranked in the bottom 10 of 180 countries for air quality, according to the Yale University Environmental Performance Index. In 2019, air pollution was estimated to account for around 1.7 million premature deaths in India. “Brick kilns, involving the burning of low-grade coal, are one of the major sectors that contribute to air pollution in South Asia,” a World Bank report said, with the brick industry making up over 90% of particulate emissions in some South Asian cities and 15% of the most dangerous small particulate emissions in Delhi.
In a story that will be familiar to much of industrial and post-industrial America, these industrial processes are both an important economic engine and an obvious detriment to health locally and are contributing to the climatic changes that are already having devastating effects in South Asia. Efforts to regulate the brick industry have already run into complaints that efficiency requirements will be too expensive for cash-strapped businesses and will result in lower employment in the sector.
In the vertiginous world of globalized capitalism, different regions using the same resource — the Appalachian coal mines, the Baltimore port, and the Indian brick manufacturers — can all at the same time be at different stages of industrialization and post-industrialization, with differing attitudes toward the coal that powers and pollutes them. In South Baltimore, the people living with the dust from the coal pier no longer sees any positive relationship between industrial activity and their own well-being, Ahmann told me.
The Baltimore and Ohio railroad, which has been part of the rail conglomerate CSX since 1980, began construction in 1827 and has long shipped coal from West Virginia and other Appalachian states to the East Coast. Baltimore’s Curtis Bay neighborhood, where Ahmann lived, is adjacent to a coal pier operated by CSX. “It’s an iconic local scene, right by a local playground, stone throw from several elementary schools and homes,” Ahmann said, making the neighborhood both “heavily industrialized and very much a lived-in place.”
While the Maryland government trumpets direct and indirect employment at the port of around 15,000 people, that’s about half the number that worked there in 1970.
“It’s no longer the case that industry is a major employer in South Baltimore,” Ahmann said. “It’s not like it was 40 years ago, when everybody knew somebody whose livelihood was attached to industrial production in this place.” Instead, people in the area “cobble together lives from low-wage service jobs,” she said. Overall, manufacturing employment in Maryland has been roughly cut in half since 1990.
In late 2021, a CSX coal facility in Curtis Bay exploded, damaging nearby homes and spreading tremors for miles. Following the blast, a coalition of community groups and the Maryland Department of the Environment investigated particulate pollution in Curtis Bay and found coal dust “present throughout the community,” with coal dust coming from the terminal itself, as well as train and truck traffic.
“We should not have open air coal piers period, and certainly not in a residential area behind a playground,” Ahmann said.
Among the many fears locals are nursing as the Key Bridge lies in ruins is that the coal will simply pile up at the port as long as it remains blocked. “These piles are going to grow every day,” Ahmann told me, describing it as “stark visual evidence of the untenability of this situation.”
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On resuming rare earth shipments, hurricane tracking, and EV tax credits
Current conditions: The Ohio Valley is still sweltering through the last remnants of this week’s brutal heat wave • The death toll from recent floods in South Africa has risen to 101 • It’s 90 degrees in Venice, Italy, where the world’s rich and famous are gathering for the wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez.
The U.S. and China have hammered out the details of a trade deal, including an agreement that China will resume rare earth shipments to the U.S. Rare earth materials are essential for everything from planes to EVs to wind turbines. China controls most of the world’s rare earth production and halted exports in April in response to President Trump’s tariff hike, and China’s chokehold on rare earths threatened to derail trade talks between the two countries altogether. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said a deal has now been “signed and sealed.” “They’re going to deliver rare earths to us,” Lutnick said, adding that the U.S. will then “take down our countermeasures.” Lutnick also indicated that Trump plans to announce further trade deals with other nations in the coming two weeks.
As climate talks in Bonn, Germany, wind down, negotiators there have agreed to increase the budget for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change by 10% over the next two years to 81.5 million euros ($95.4 million). The UNFCCC runs some of the world’s largest climate negotiations and tries to ensure countries follow through on their climate commitments. Its budget is funded by government contributions. China will account for 20% of the new budget, Reuters reported. The U.S. is supposed to cover 22%, but President Trump has pulled international climate funding. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropic arm has stepped in to cover the missing U.S. contributions. UN climate chief Simon Stiell said the budget increase was “a clear signal that governments continue to see UN-convened climate cooperation as essential, even in difficult times.”
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Hurricane forecasting is about to get a little bit more difficult. At the end of June, the federal government is going to stop distributing readings from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, a tool forecasters all over the world have been using to track and predict hurricane development. As retired federal meteorologist Alan Gerard told Bloomberg, this particular satellite program is unique because it lets forecasters peer inside storms and monitor for rapid intensification. As the planet warms, hurricanes are strengthening much faster than they did in recent decades. Hurricane expert Michael Lowry says the Department of Defense seems to be concerned that the satellite data poses a security concern. Its termination “will severely impede and degrade hurricane forecasts for this season and beyond, affecting tens of millions of Americans who live along its hurricane-prone shorelines,” Lowry wrote.
A group of U.S. car dealers penned a letter urging senators to “reject provisions in the budget reconciliation process that would abruptly eliminate EV-related tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act,” warning that sudden changes would bring about market uncertainty, damage businesses, and hurt Americans. The signatories – including EV Auto, Carmax, and Caravan – instead call for a “gradual sunset” of the EV tax credits to avoid disruption to the used car market. “A multi-year transitional period would also provide the opportunity for Americans to continue adopting cleaner vehicles more affordably,” they add. The tax and budget bill put forward by Senate Republicans would end the $7,500 EV tax credit within 180 days after the law’s passage.
A report out today from the International Council on Clean Transportation estimates that the world’s private jets produced more greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 than all the flights that took off from Heathrow Airport — the world’s fourth busiest airport — that same year. Emissions from private jets increased 25% over the past decade. A few more interesting (though perhaps not surprising) tidbits from the report:
International Council on Clean Transportation
Solar power accounted for more than 10% of U.S. electrical output in April, while wind provided about 14%. As Michelle Lewis at Electreknotes, “solar is now producing more electricity than hydropower, biomass, and geothermal combined.”
Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”
Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.
What are you referencing when you say, ‘the wind industry’s strategy is failing’?
Anyone in the climate space, in the clean energy space, the worst thing you can do is go silent and pretend that this is just going to go away. Even if it’s the president and the administration delivering the attacks, I think there’s an important strategy that’s been lacking in the wind and other sectors that I don’t think has been effective. There was a recent E&E News story that noted a couple of wind developers when asked for comment just say, “No comment.” This to me misses a really big opportunity to not get in a fight with people but talk about the benefits of wind.
Not taking advantage of milestones like ground breaking or construction starting is a missed opportunity to drive public opinion. If you lose support in public opinion, you’re going to lose support from public officials, because they largely follow public opinion.
And there’s no way that’s going to change if you don’t take the opportunities to talk about the benefits that wind can provide, in terms of good-paying local jobs or supplying more electrons to the grid. By almost any measure the strategy employed so far has not really worked.
Okay, but what is the wind industry strategy that isn’t working? What are they doing to rebut attacks on the technology, on property values, on the environment?
We’re not hearing them. We’re not hearing those arguments.
You can’t let criticisms go unanswered.It would better serve the industry and these companies to push back against criticisms. It’s not like you can’t anticipate what they are. And what do you have to lose? You’re in the worst position of any energy sector in this political moment. It would be nice to see some fight and sharp campaign skills and strategic effort in terms of communication. And there’s no strategic value from what I can tell in [being silent].
I understand not wanting to pick a fight with folks who hold your fate in their hands, but there’s a way to thread a needle that isn’t antagonizing anybody but also making sure the facts have been heard. And that’s been missing.
You’d specifically said the industry should stop ‘being paralyzed in fear and start going on offense.’ What does that look like to you?
Taking every opportunity to get your message out there. The lowest hanging fruit is when a reporter comes and asks you, What do you think about this criticism? You should definitely reply. It’s lifting up third-party voices that are benefiting from a specific project, talking about the economic impacts more broadly, talking about the benefits to the grid.
There’s a whole number of tools in the toolbox to put to use but the toolboxes remain shut thus far. Targeted paid media, elevating the different voices and communities that are going to resonate with different legislators, and certainly the facts are helpful. Also having materials prepared, like validators and frequently asked questions and answers.
You’re trying to win. You’re trying to get your project to be successful and deliver jobs and tax revenue. And I think it would be wise for companies to look at the playbooks of electoral campaigns, because there’s lots of tools that campaigns use.
How do renewable energy developers get around the problem of partisanship? How do you get outta that through a campaign approach?
These projects are decided locally. It’s deciding who the decision-makers are and not just letting opponents who are getting talking points through right-wing media show up and reiterate these talking points. Oftentimes, there’s no one on the pro side even showing up at all, and it makes it really easy for city councils to oppose projects. They’re losing by forfeit. We can’t keep doing that.
And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.
2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.
3. Bedford County, Pennsylvania – Arena Renewables is trying to thread a needle through development in one of the riskiest Pennsylvania counties for development, with an agriculture-fueled opposition risk score of 89.
4. Knox County, Ohio – The Ohio Power Siting Board has given the green light to Open Road Renewables’ much-watched Frasier Solar project.
5. Clay County, Missouri – We’ll find out next week if rural Missouri can still take it easy on a large solar project.
6. Clark County, Nevada – President Trump’s Bureau of Land Management has pushed back the permitting process for EDF Renewables’ Bonanza solar project by at least two months and possibly longer .
7. Klickitat County, Washington – Washington State has now formally overridden local opposition to Cypress Creek’s Carriger solar project after teeing up the decision in May.