President Joe Biden is offering the latest plan from Washington to help struggling coal communities: turn mining ghost towns into hubs for clean energy manufacturing. The Energy Department announced $428 million in federal grants Tuesday for manufacturing projects in 15 coal communities, writes Benjamin Storrow. The grants are part of a wider effort to create jobs by greening the economy. Some labor unions and environmental advocates have been pushing Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to devise a plan for reviving communities decimated by the steady decline in coal since before they entered the White House in 2021. Now, with two weeks until the election, it’s doubtful whether the federal investment will matter to voters. While some of the funding will go to factories planned in Michigan and Pennsylvania, critical swing states where coal was once a pillar of the economy, such projects won't come to fruition for years. Plus, Biden and Harris have struggled to politically leverage their efforts to green the economy. On the campaign trail, Harris rarely mentions climate change or the clean energy investments secured through the nation’s two largest pieces of climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan infrastructure law. “It is one of the mysteries that haunts the entire presidential race at this point,” said Sean O’Leary, a researcher who has studied the coal industry’s collapse at the Ohio River Valley Institute. Still, the investments offer a potential lifeline to communities in desperate need of jobs. U.S. coal mining employment has plunged from almost 90,000 jobs in 2012 to 43,000 this year. Employment at coal-fired power plants fell from 86,000 jobs in 2016 to 63,000 last year, according to Energy Department statistics. The question of how to help the workers left behind has bedeviled policymakers for years. It has proven politically challenging for Democratic administrations, whose environmental policies are often blamed for coal’s decline. The industry has been steadily priced out by cheaper natural gas and undercut by regulations to reduce carbon emissions. Some climate advocates have proposed shifting mining jobs to clean power projects, but wind and solar facilities often employ fewer people. Republicans have talked up carbon capture and storage as a way to preserve coal plants, but the technology has yet to be widely adopted. The Obama administration promoted a program that taught miners to write code, which was not overly successful. Some states have also passed laws aimed at ensuring a so-called just transition for mining communities by providing social services and benefits for former mine workers, creating job retraining programs or building up new economies. The climate law provides tax benefits to renewable developers and manufacturers that build projects in areas where coal mines and plants have closed. The new grants build on that by providing money for specific projects, including $28 million for a Michigan manufacturer of transmission conductors and $24 million for a Kentucky-based company that builds parts of electric vehicle batteries. Biden’s plan is “actually pretty impressive,” O’Leary told Ben. “In these grants, DOE seems to be doing what appears to be a pretty good job anticipating industries that will thrive and be viable for the long term.”
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