Coal Coming Back For Illinois

Illinois is restarting it's coal mining business again. With prices of natural gas and oil going through the roof, Illinois has turned back to it's once booming coal industry for help. With new technology and the hope to land FutureGen, the world's first coal-based, zero-emissions electricity and hydrogen power plant, Illinois is hoping to create cheaper power and create jobs.

(Chicago Tribune(AP))Few states are richer in coal than Illinois, where an estimated 38 billion tons of coal yet to be recovered trail only reserves found in Montana and Wyoming, according to the Energy Information Administration, the Energy Department's statistics arm.

Illinois' coal production, which peaked in 1918 at 89 million tons and a workforce of more than 100,000, took a beating in the 1990s after the federal Clean Air Act required coal-fired power plants to either burn low-sulfur coal or install costly scrubbers to curb the emission of sulfur dioxide, a cause of acid rain.

To meet those new requirements, Midwestern plants found it cheaper to import low-sulfur coal from Western states like Wyoming. In Illinois, an industry that produced 60 million tons of coal and boasted more than 10,000 jobs in 1990 plunged to 33 million tons and fewer than 3,500 workers just a decade later as many of the mines closed.

Illinois coal mines numbered about 45 in 1980, twice the 22 the Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Healthy Administration now lists as active in the state.

Hopefully the new technology will help with the pollution from these mines.