Key private sector decision makers on coal

This article is part of the Coal Issues portal on SourceWatch, a project of Global Energy Monitor and the Center for Media and Democracy. See here for help on adding material to CoalSwarm.

In the United States, two dozen chief executive officers are in charge of companies that own 728 out of the 1,522 existing coal-fired generating units. The total capacity of these 728 plants is 235,927 MW, or 70 percent of total U.S. coal-fired power capacity of 335,891.

CEO	Company/Entity	Number of Coal Plants in U.S. (2005)	U.S. Coal-Fired Capacity (2005)	2007 Revenue	Active Coal Plant Proposals (2013)
Michael G. Morris	American Electric Power	63	27,636 MW	$12,101 million	Hempstead
David M. Ratcliffe	Southern Company	68	26,610 MW	$15,140 million	Kemper Project
Jim Rogers	Duke Energy (including Progress Energy)	93	26,502 MW	$21,596 million	Edwardsport Plant
David W. Crane	NRG Energy (including GenOn Energy)	70	20,865 MW	$19,216 million	none
Tom D. Kilgore	Tennessee Valley Authority (U.S. gov't)	63	17,647 MW	$9,105 million	none
Gary L. Rainwater	Ameren	31	10,719 MW	$7,380 million	none
Warren Buffett and Gregory E. Abel	MidAmerican Energy	29	10,281 MW	$12,376 million	none
John W. Rowe	Exelon	21	9,415 MW	$18,916 million	none
Richard C. Kelly	Xcel Energy	30	9,021 MW	$9,960 million	none
Anthony J. Alexander	FirstEnergy	36	8,495 MW	$12,552 million	none
Thomas F. Farrell II	Dominion	32	8,417 MW	$15,674 million	none
Wulf H. Bernotat	E.ON	29	8,347 MW	$108,026 million	none
Anthony F. Earley Jr.	DTE Energy	22	7,997 MW	$8,506 million	none
Paul J. Evanson	Allegheny Energy	22	7,636 MW	$3,307 million	none
David Campbell	Luminant	9	6,137 MW	$8,500 million	none
James H. Miller	PPL	13	5,981 MW	$6,498 million	none
Paul Hanrahan	AES	29	5,406 MW	$13,588 million	none
William D. Harvey	Alliant Energy	30	4,055 MW	$3,438 million	none
J. Wayne Leonard	Entergy	5	4,014 MW	$11,484 million	none
Bruce A. Williamson	Dynegy / LS Power	12	3,755 MW	$3,103 million	Sandy Creek Plant
Paul M. Barbas	DPL	11	3,521 MW	$1,516 million	none
Robert C. Skaggs Jr.	NiSource	10	3,470 MW	$6,894 million	none

Rolling Stone Magazine calls out so-called "Climate Killers"

In the January 2010 edition of Rolling Stone Magazine, journalist Tim Dickinson profiled the top 17 United States "polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming". Below are excerpts from the article.

Warren Buffett

Despite being a key adviser to Obama during the financial crisis, America's best-known investor has been blasting the president's push to curb global warming — using the same lying points promoted by far-right Republicans. The climate bill passed by the House, Buffett insists, is a "huge tax — and there's no sense calling it anything else." What's more, he says, the measure would mean "very poor people are going to pay a lot more money for their electricity." Never mind that the climate bill, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, would actually save Americans with the lowest incomes about $40 a year.

But Buffett, whose investments have the power to move entire markets, is doing far more than bad-mouthing climate legislation — he's literally banking on its failure. In recent months, the Oracle of Omaha has invested billions in carbon-polluting industries, seeking to cash in as the world burns. His conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, has added 1.28 million shares of America's biggest climate polluter, ExxonMobil, to its balance sheet. And in November, Berkshire placed a huge wager on the future of coal pollution, purchasing the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad for $26 billion — the largest acquisition of Buffett's storied career. BNSF is the nation's top hauler of coal, shipping some 300 million tons a year. That's enough to light up 10 percent of the nation's homes — many of which are powered by another Berkshire subsidiary, MidAmerican Energy. Although Berkshire is the largest U.S. firm not to disclose its carbon pollution — and second globally only to the Bank of China — its utilities have the worst emissions intensity in America, belching more than 65 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2008 alone.

As a savvy investor, Buffett would only buy a coal-shipping railroad if he felt certain that Congress will fail to crack down on climate pollution. "Whatever hurts coal also hurts the railroad business," observes Peter Gray, a corporate climate attorney at the international law firm of McKenna Long & Aldridge. "Mr. Buffett must believe that efforts to adopt cap-and-trade legislation will fail."

That's a strange position for the billionaire to take, given that he's promised to donate more than 80 percent of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "As someone who is giving so much money to international development, Buffett ought to know better," says Joe Romm, who served as an assistant energy secretary under Bill Clinton. "He ought to have spent a great deal of time considering the greatest threats to developing countries — which would have quickly educated him about climate change."

David M. Ratcliffe

Ratcliffe, the head of America's second-dirtiest electric utility, has assembled an army of 63 lobbyists — almost twice as many as any other company — to defeat climate legislation. It's a pro-carbon dream team, anchored by Jeffrey Holmstead of Rudy Giuliani's law firm, who worked on behalf of utilities like Southern as a top clean-air official under George W. Bush. The reason for the lobbying blitz: Southern burns a lot of coal — its largest plant produces more carbon pollution than all of Brazil's power plants combined — and new limits on emissions being considered by the Senate could cost the utility some $400 million a year. That's why Ratcliffe continues to deny the reality of global warming: "I don't believe there's an impending catastrophe," he says, insisting that the environment will simply "adapt to changing realities."

"The value of his stock trumps everything," says Carl Pope, head of the Sierra Club. "It's hard to imagine a more cynical attitude. But no doubt he genuinely sees it that way — his bottom line is the measure of the world."

Don Blankenship

In an age when most CEOs are canny enough to at least pay lip service to the realities of climate change, Blankenship stands apart as corporate America's most unabashed denier. Global warming, he insists, is nothing but "a hoax and a Ponzi scheme." His fortune depends on such lies: Massey Energy, the nation's fourth-largest coal-mining operation, unearths more than 40 million tons of the fossil fuel each year — often by blowing the tops off of Appalachian mountains.

The country's highest-paid coal executive, Blankenship is a villain ripped straight from the comic books: a jowly, mustache-sporting, union-busting coal baron who uses his fortune to bend politics to his will. He recently financed a $3.5 million campaign to oust a state Supreme Court justice who frequently ruled against his company, and he hung out on the French Riviera with another judge who was weighing an appeal by Massey. "Don Blankenship would actually be less powerful if he were in elected office," Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia once observed. "He would be twice as accountable and half as feared."

On the national level, Blankenship enjoys a position of influence on the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has led the fight to kill climate legislation. He enjoys inveighing against the "greeniacs" — including Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Al Gore — who are "taking over the world." And he has even taken to tweeting about climate change: "We must demand that more coal be burned to save the Earth from global cooling."

In more unguarded moments, however, Blankenship confesses that his over-the-top rhetoric is strategic. "If it weren't for guys like me," he says, "the middle would be further to the left." He also admits that his efforts to block climate legislation are ultimately self-serving: "It would probably cut our business in half."

Resources

Related SourceWatch Articles

• Existing U.S. Coal Plants

External links

• Sushma Sumbramian, "How Social Pressure Can Drive Eco-Consciousness," Plenty Magazine, November 18, 2008