CODY — Wyoming’s coal companies are tired of taking it on the chin from Washington, D.C.
One of the subtle themes emerging from the Wyoming Mining Association’s annual convention in this Western-themed town on the edge of Yellowstone National Park is a heady conversation of messaging being developed to counter Washington, D.C.’s anti-fossil fuel policymakers.
The topic has caught the attention of 250 energy mining representatives attending the WMA’s 68th annual convention held this week at this city’s Holiday Inn Cody at Buffalo Bill Village.
“The nation’s energy IQ needs help,” said Mike Nasi, an energy and environmental attorney with the law firm of Jackson Walker in Austin, Texas.
Some of the educational countercampaigns to consumer and alternative energy advocates discussed at the WMA convention included “I Am Mining,” to be rolled out this summer by the American Exploration & Mining Association, a trade group for hard rock companies based in Spokane, Washington, and the Essential Minerals Association, which dropped its old name of Industrial Minerals Association as a way to better reflect the interests of companies that mine or process minerals critical to a broad swath of industries.
Nasi discussed with Cowboy State Daily some of his own challenges of messaging.
He is up to his ears in landmark litigation to defend the fossil fuels industry from attempts by the federal government to shutter coal- or gas-fired power plants through the early 2040s.
Low Energy IQ
To fight these initiatives involves technical and complex legal strategizing work that is oftentimes challenging to explain to Americans who feel more comfortable watching TV in the living room than slipping into a corporate war room to discuss an industry’s survival.
For instance, he explained, in recent months the Bureau of Land Management has proposed ending coal leasing on public lands by 2041 in the energy-rich Powder River Basin in northeastern Wyoming, while the Environmental Protection Agency wants to begin phasing out coal- and gas-fired power plants as early as the 2030s if technological equipment isn’t hooked up to capture carbon pollutants.
This is doom and gloom for PRB coal if Washington’s gambit comes to fruition, he said.
“We’ve done a poor job of educating people,” Nasi said. “I’m not talking about pro-fossil or pro-anything, I’m talking about things like what’s an (electrical) plug connected to, and how does that affect my life?"
The threat of potential destruction of Wyoming’s coal business is real, he said.
"The concept that we were going to go swap out a bunch of coal plants with gas is over," Nasi said. “EPA is explicitly not allowing gas development. They do not want large gas power plants.”
“Now we’re in this anti-development mentality where somehow the human stewardship role is to not touch nature, rather than be a steward of it,” he said. “This is absurd because covering our wildernesses and our habitat with renewable energy is not a good idea.”
An Uphill Battle
David Gattie, an associate professor and senior fellow with the Center of International Trade and Security at the University of Georgia in Athens, told Cowboy State Daily that these new messaging and rebranding campaigns to fight Washington are coming as the result of the “energy transition away from fossil fuels,” a push that began several years ago that he first observed when a coal-fired power was shuttered in his home state and construction began on a new nuclear-fueled power generating reactor.
“We need to get this U.S. energy debate back into the national security lane, which is where it always has been and where it belongs,” Gattie said. “What we're going to end up doing is putting our industrial base here in the U.S. in a much weaker energy disposition relative to every other country in the world.”
The list of trade groups and others rebranding their messages is a long one.
Mark Compton, executive director of the American Exploration & Mining Association, told WMA’s audience of coal, uranium, bentonite and trona representatives that his group has an educational campaign rolling out later this month to address the energy transition.
“As an industry leader, we have faced our arguments with facts. There’s nothing wrong with that, but facts don’t win the day. Emotion does,” Compton said. “Our opponents are really, really good at using emotion to gin up opposition to mining.”
“So, we are beginning a PR campaign this summer called ‘I Am Mining,’” said Compton, explaining that it’s aimed at humanizing the people behind digging up ores. “We’re not the big, bad mining industry. We’re just like you. We have the same hopes, dreams, passions and hobbies as everyone else.”
Compton describes the program as a grassroots social media campaign that will deliver stories of the “tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands” folks who are part of exploration and mining.
“I’m hoping it catches fire and that the industry sees value in it, and I’m hoping that at some point we’re creating television commercials,” he said.
Tuned-Out Public
Others at the WMA convention who have clashed with Washington see similar policy challenges over getting their messaging through to a tuned-out public.
Last November, Consol Energy Inc., an East Coast coal and energy company based outside Pittsburgh, launched a new public awareness campaign titled “Not So Fast” to address misconceptions regarding coal’s future role in the global energy world and to educate people about the role coal still plays in their daily lives.
Matt Mackowiak, manager of government affairs with CONSOL Energy, told the WMA convention that the campaign is designed to dispel myths, such as the export potential of coal despite nagging West Coast challenges to get it shipped overseas.
“There were 1 billion tons of thermal coal exports in 2023, an all-time high,” Mackowiak said.
Consol experienced some disruptions in its coal exports earlier this year when the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed. Exports from the harbor resumed in late May.
“Studies indicate that most people, especially the younger generation, has no idea where electricity comes from or how it’s produced. They are extremely uninformed,” he said. “But there are a lot of things that we can teach them through this campaign.”
Visual Branding
Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group, said his group launched a new visual branding identity to reflect the “forward-looking” role the U.S. mining industry plays in the economy.
“The mining industry is essential to the U.S. economy and is at the tip of nearly every supply chain from energy to national security, technology to infrastructure,” he said.
NMA also has a campaign called Count on Coal to make America aware of the benefits of affordable, reliable coal-generated electricity. That campaign, created a decade ago by Virginia-based Weber Merritt, is designed to fight new regulations that would control pollution from mining and burning coal.
“NMA engages in a multi-platform trade association strategy, it's grassroots, it’s earned media, paid media, direct lobbying, working with your governor (Mark Gordon, R-Wyoming), the state attorneys general, to tie it all together to share information,” Nolan said. “The trick to this job is knowing when to deploy each of those components in a cost effective and efficient manner.”
Jenny Martin, associate vice president of Essential Minerals Association, said her organization, which has been around since 1936, recently updated its branding message with a new website and name change for its trade group of 80 companies.
“If there’s one thing that I’ve learned, it’s that the minerals industry really wants to do a better job of telling its story,” Martin told the WMA convention. “And I think that our latest brand, with our new logo, really gives us a brand that’s recognizable and helps us tell that story. There’s a real need for policymakers and the public to understand our industry.”
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
