Fuel for Thought Blog

One of our most popular annual features is our state-by-state comparison of electricity prices.  As in past years, we base our electricity rate map upon the most recent full year price data released by the

Fairly or not, few regions of the United States are more associated with deep and longstanding poverty as Appalachia.

The War on Coal is well and truly over, but a peculiar debate over its impact lingers on. Revisionist history is central to this debate, with some folks now suggesting that the coal industry was never in a two-front struggle against both a regulatory onslaught and cheap natural gas.

An important debate is taking place in Arizona over the future of one of the country’s largest coal plants, the Navajo Generating Station (NGS).

My three year old son is nothing if not confident. Wanting to hold serve with his older brother, he backs down from nothing. No matter the task at hand, “I can do it!” is his starting proposition. Successfully put a straw in his juice box? Count to 30? Put on his socks?

​We’ve been telling readers for some time how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) now argues that its once “transformative” Clean Power Plan (CPP)—upon greater reflection and a weak legal justification—really isn’t that “transformative” after all.

To say that the state of Washington has a trade-based economy would be a gross understatement.

With presumptive presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both in West Virginia this week ahead of the state’s upcoming primary, the issue of coal has emerged as a major media storyline.

In early March, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton let slip an unusual campaign promise—unemployment for coal miners and bankruptcy for their employers: