Out of the Hole with Coal

By 1990, the U.S. will probably have about doubled its present energy consumption. Domestic oil and natural gas, which today account for two-thirds of the nation's energy, will be able to meet only 40% of demand. Nuclear, hydro, solar, geothermal and other nonfossil fuel sources will take care of another 20%. To fill the remaining 40% gap, the nation faces two likely choices. It can import much more oil and gas--and pay heavily in terms both of balance of payments and political dependence on foreign countries. Or it can turn to coal, which now provides 20% of U.S. energy --and pay heavily for developing this rich but problem-ridden resource. Right now, the betting is on coal.

The main reason is that 3 trillion tons of coal are scattered from Pennsylvania to Washington State, from Alabama to Alaska. If a quarter of the known reserves can be tapped, they will satisfy the nation's domestic energy needs for 200 to 300 years, with ample to spare for export. Says Carl Bagge, president of the National Coal Association: "We are the Persian Gulf of the world's coal supplies."

To exploit that lode, the industry has to change radically. Estimated demand will grow this year by 10%, to 660 million tons, but domestic output will not keep up with it. Forecasts for 1974 production range from a repetition of last year's 590 million tons to 650 million tons. Indeed, several New England utilities have already contracted to buy coal from Poland. The industry is having some trouble raising money for expansion. Investors worry particularly about the three gritty problems that bedevil coal:

GETTING IT. Coal is often difficult and dangerous to mine. In 1969, Congress passed the National Coal Health and Safety Act to force improvements in mine conditions. These were vividly recalled by Arnold Miller, president of the United Mine Workers, in a recent speech. Old miners, said Miller, "labored their lives away in the bowels of the earth and reaped as their reward a back bent like a stunted tree and lungs that did not work because they were full of coal dust." The law has started to change the situation, but it also has sharply increased operating costs and caused some 500 marginal mines to close. Productivity per worker plunged from a 1969 high of 16.5 tons a day to twelve tons.

To solve the problems, the coal companies have had to put a new emphasis on mechanization and strip mining. Using giant shovels, the companies can peel back the earth and gouge out the underlying coal with a minimum of workers and a maximum of productivity. Stripping, mainly in Appalachia, now accounts for about half of all U.S. coal production, and the proportion is likely to rise. All the major companies have lately bought or leased rights to hundreds of millions of tons of coal that lie close under the plains of the Dakotas and Montana, the semidesert of New Mexico, the basins of Colorado and Wyoming.

Yet stripping has wreaked havoc on whole areas. In response to public outrage over the scarred and torn land. Congress seems to be close to passing a bill that would make strippers repair the ravaged earth after mining. Such reclamation works well in the rolling, well-watered countryside of Ohio and Pennsylvania, but is difficult in the arid West, and virtually impossible on the steep slopes of West Virginia and Kentucky. In the long run, however, only 5% of the U.S.'s immense reserves are strippable. The rest must be mined by men working in deep shafts.

The 125,000 working members of the U.M.W. are mostly men in either their 50s or their 20s. The middle generation is missing because between about 1950 and 1968, the coal industry did not hire new miners. Union President Miller vows that he will not only bargain fiercely for more pay (current average wage: $225 a week), but also let the coal companies know that "the pick and shovel days are over."

The large producers (see box) have already begun a massive switch to new technology to boost productivity. Many, too, have started training programs to teach miners to use such innovations as conveyor belts that turn corners in the labyrinthine mines and hydraulic supports to prop up mine roofs. Explains John Corcoran, president of Consolidation Coal Co.: "They used to say that a miner needed a strong back. Now he needs a good head more." Still, since the new machinery is costly, it will badly strain many of the nation's 1,200 mining companies, particularly the small ones with little capital to call upon.

BURNING IT. Coal is a dirty fuel. Made up of the carbonized remains of primeval plants that were buried in the earth for 250 million to 400 million years, it contains up to 36 chemical elements. When burned, many of these are released into the air as pollutants, the most harmful of which is sulfur. The Government has strict air-quality standards for every U.S. region. In eastern Ohio, for example, no coal with more than .6% sulfur will be burned after 1975.

The companies have combined with electric utilities and other industries to find ways to take the sulfur out of coal. Usually, this is done by sending coal gases through "scrubbers" at the bottom of tall smokestacks that contain a chemical solution to filter emissions.

The Southern Co., a holding company of utilities, is trying to extract sulfur not from smoke but from the coal itself. At a pilot plant near Birmingham, Southern dissolves coal with a recoverable chemical solvent. The coal is filtered to remove impurities and then resolidified. The final product is a clean fuel that has virtually no sulfur or ash and a very high heat value. Cost per ton promises to be competitive.

CONVERTING IT. Solid coal cannot power jetliners or cars, and the U.S. depends on liquid and gaseous fuels for two-thirds of its energy. Thus the key to coal's future is whether it can be converted into either synthetic oil or natural gas. It can be, but economical processes are yet to come.

Gasification is almost a reality right now. The Federal Office of Coal Research has helped to sponsor four pilot plants, and eight more are planned. Each uses a different system, but all are based on a complicated process that was pioneered in Germany in 1936. The technique starts by breaking down water into its components of hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is combined in the presence of heat with the carbon in pulverized coal to produce methane, the main ingredient of natural gas.

Trouble is, this synthetic product does not have as high a heating value as natural gas. So another step is needed to upgrade it. Total cost is great; a pilot plant runs about $20 million, and a full-scale plant turning out 100 million cu. ft. a day will cost an estimated $200 million. But that is less expensive than liquefying and importing natural gas. Nearly every major coal company has joined with gas companies in plans to build gasification plants on Western coal fields by the late 1970s.

Further along on the horizon are schemes to produce synthetic crude oil from coal. Several experiments are under way, of which the F.M.C. Corp.'s pilot plant is farthest along. As in gasification, the process begins by grinding coal into fine particles and then heating them in hot vessels. When hydrogen is added, the coal particles dissolve, becoming both good quality oil and gas. Again, the cost is high. But the interest of both industry and Government in coal is even higher. If all goes well, that dirty, difficult material will once more be the U.S.'s king of fuels.

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